Weight watchers of booze? Laura Willoughby’s “Club Soda” serves up mindful drinking
According to Mintel, as of May 2025, 53% of UK adults had consumed low- or no-alcohol beer, wine, cider, spirits or cocktails in the past 12 months. Mintel also estimates the current market value of low- and no-alcohol drinks at £413 million. Meanwhile, IWSR projections suggest that the UK’s no- and low-alcohol market could be worth £800 million by 2028.
The British pioneer of the alcohol-free movement is not looking to banish booze, but rather offer alternatives for those who want to reduce or eliminate their alcohol intake.
If you think that no- and low-alcohol drinks are for dull people enjoying a quiet life, you haven’t met Laura Willoughby MBE. Considered the British pioneer of the alcohol-free movement, she founded Club Soda in 2015, that’s been billed as the world’s largest mindful drinking brand and dubbed: “Weight Watchers, but with booze.”
Willoughby followed that with the first Mindful Drinking Festival in 2017 and the opening of a tasting room and shop in Covent Garden London, listing around 150 low & no alcohol brands. On top of developing education courses, conducting research and generating guides to Low & No alcoholic drinks, Willoughby is a Drink Doctor for The Caterer, an Imbibe Ambassador, and a judge for WAFA, IWSC, Great British Food Awards, Global Drinks Intel ESG Awards and Publican of the Year. She is also a Trustee for The Drinks Trust and Equal Measures, and was named number 11 in 2024’s Drinks Retailing’s latest Top 100 Most Influential People in Drink (UK).
An unusual skill set in the drink space
Willoughby has been a community campaigner since she was about 14. She was awarded an MBE aged 30 for her work as a local Liberal Democrat councillor. That background in politics and campaigning is probably what makes her so successful in her current role at the head of Club Soda. Has the MBE been useful? “It used to be quite handy when I was young and working in politics. It made me look more established. Now, it doesn’t matter anymore but it probably doesn’t do any harm if I’m speaking to some people in the industry.”
Willoughby’s focus is on making alcohol-free drinks more visible and available to change the way society perceives alcohol and the way that we drink. “I’m a very mission driven person,” she says. “I believe I’m a people person who can talk to people and work out what problems need to be solved. That makes me quite unique in this space, I guess, in terms of the way that I think about the work that we do. I have an unusual skill set in this space, and I have carved out a niche for myself.”
Influential, not influencer
Willoughby says she’s driven by bringing people together and creating opportunities for collaboration, linking like-minded entrepreneurs or, for example, helping a brand find someone to share a stand at a trade show. “I talk to lots of people, and I make myself useful,” she says. “Change only happens if everybody’s involved and bringing people together to do things is what helps.”
She acknowledges that others have now emerged in the low- and no-alcohol space from consultants and writers to social media creators. She sees herself as “influential rather than an influencer.”
Having grown up in a sleepy rural town in the southwest where teenagers would drink cider as a rite of passage, she moved to London aged 23. She eventually ended up in a job she wasn’t enjoying and where no one cared if she turned up or not. For someone as driven as her it was soul destroying.
Her drinking went up quite a bit, as she began to meet friends for boozy lunches. She says she began to scare herself but also to bore herself. “You become quite boring and quite small when alcohol becomes the focus of your life,” she says. “It wasn’t a particularly long period of my life, but it was enough to motivate me to put a lid on it, on top of the fact that there is a history of heavy drinking in my family. Drinking killed my dad when I was 30, and I always knew that I had similar drinking habits as him.”
Wine generation
It was the era of the ladette, and the peak of wine’s introduction into the UK. For the first time you could buy wine at a reasonable price in a supermarket. As it was no longer acceptable for a man to go to the pub in the evening and leave his wife at home with the children — women were working too — couples began sharing wine in the evening in front of the TV and the UK’s ‘wine generation’ was born.
“All the women my age who joined Club Soda when I first started are women who got worried about their drinking because of the quantity of wine they drank,” Willoughby says. “It’s not other drinks. It’s wine. Even if we’re drinking a dry wine, it’s still a sweet product and it’s very easy to drink and then to lose track of how much you’re drinking and build up a tolerance really quickly. That’s what has happened to my generation. And now they’re hitting menopause and they’re all knocking alcohol on its head.”
Ever the optimist, Willoughby also sees an opportunity in the current surplus of wine production coinciding with growing demand for alcohol-free alternatives and thus creating a new commercial opening for vineyards.
Not interested in eliminating alcohol
It took Willoughby several attempts to cut down. She claims they were unsuccessful because she wasn’t really that committed. So, aged 38, she booked herself onto a one-day workshop. She wasn’t impressed, describing it as “not particularly good or even ethical.” Still, even though she came out angry, she’s never drunk since. Anger, she says, is a good motivator for her.
“The UK hospitality sector loses £800 million by not upgrading people from tap water to something they pay for”, Jeff Israely
Two things happened very quickly: her energy surged, and she began to get her passion back and realign with her values. She stopped putting things off to “another day when I’d feel better,” which she found genuinely exciting. “When I talk about the fact that I prefer who I am now,” she says, “It’s because I feel like the person who moved to London when I was 23, someone who can engage and give people the time they need, but more effectively now than I was when I was drinking.”
Willloughby says her focus is on “systemic change,” and not that “we get rid of alcohol, because I’m not particularly interested in that, but in the fact that I want there to be a choice wherever people go and that they also have a quality experience.”
Moderation and mindful drinking
Club Soda sells two courses – How to Drink Mindfully and How to Stop Drinking to drink less or stop drinking. Some 16,000 people have been through these courses in 10 years, and an evaluation from South University shows that they work.
“For me, I’ve made the decision not to drink alcohol anymore, but I’ll always have a boozy dessert. It doesn’t trigger me at all,” she says. “For those people who do drink, there are many ways to moderate their intake. They can take nights off, lower the ABV of their drinks, have fewer drinks, or alternate with alcohol-free ones, or all of those things. Each strategy works for some people and not for others, but they’re all valid. It means that the biggest market for alcohol-free drinks isn’t made up of people who have quit drinking, but of those who are moderating. Mid-strength drinks are also growing in line with that trend, since having the same number of drinks with half the alcohol is another good strategy for cutting down.”
Willoughby points out that the margins are the same for alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. If someone isn’t drinking in a pub or restaurant and only has tap water or soft drinks to choose from, she sees it as a huge missed opportunity. “The UK hospitality sector loses £800 million by not upgrading people from tap water to something they pay for,” she says. “On top of that, when people look to book for groups and check a menu in advance, if it doesn’t have something for everyone, they’ll go elsewhere. The loyalty you gain from offering something that makes people feel happy and welcome is priceless. When people choose not to drink but decide against going to a pub or restaurant because the offer isn’t right for them, everyone loses.”
Category supporting each other
In 2024, Club Soda entered a partnership with Majestic Wine to stock Eisberg 0% wines, Moderato Colombard, Colombard rosé and Merlot-Tannat, all 0.5% ABV, Three Spirits Nightcap 0.5% ABV, Three Spirits Livener 0.5% ABV, Everleaf Mountain 0.4% ABV, Botivo Non Alcoholic Aperitivo 0.2%, and REAL Dry Non-Alcoholic Sparkling White across its 212 stores, doubling Majestic’s range of no- and low-alcohol drinks. Sales in this category had already increased by more than 600% at Majestic since March 2022.
“We act as an agent, taking a percentage but also bringing our expertise about what’s selling well here that might work well at Majestic,” Willoughby says. “We have regular meetings with all the brands we’ve brought in to look at how we can work together to grow the category, rather than buying an advert here for one brand and another advert there for a different one. We support the category by supporting each other. All the brands have done in-store tastings for one another. The customer benefits, the category within the store benefits, and the store benefits as well.”
When asked whether legislation or societal change could make a difference to the category, Willoughby sighs: “My word, this could be a list as long as your arm. The biggest issue at the moment is that the UK government still hasn’t sorted out what counts as an alcoholic-free drink and what doesn’t. They’ve been working on it for 10 years, but it keeps getting pushed to the back burner. The government has signalled that it will allow drinks at 0.5% ABV and under to be labelled alcohol-free, and for me that’s one of the biggest shifts that needs to happen, because producers in the UK are working with one arm tied behind their back.”
She adds that the government has also expressed a desire to support the growth of the low- and no-alcohol sector. “Breaks such as removing VAT on alcohol-free drinks to help reduce prices would make a real difference. Everyone expects alcohol-free drinks to be cheaper because we overvalue alcohol, but they’re actually more expensive to make.”
Willoughby says there’s also a lot the hospitality sector can do. “We still have a catering system based on a three-course meal and half a bottle of wine per person, which makes it very difficult for people who want to moderate or drink something non-alcoholic in the evening. I was at a dinner the other night, and the wine waiter had only one mode of working. He didn’t ask what you’d like, he just wandered around topping up wine glasses all evening.”
So beyond legislation, Willoughby concludes: “There are also lots of small, micro-level shifts in the way hospitality operates that could make a really big difference for low- and no-alcohol drinks.”
Biography
Anne Burchett DipWSET is a wine marketing and communications specialist, an expert with the European Research Executive Agency (REA), a wine judge (IWC and Decanter), a writer and a lecturer on the business of wine. She has worked in the wine business for more than 35 years.
Link https://anneburchettwrites.wordpress.com/
Selection of drinks zero by Laura
Zeno Sparkling Rosé
I never thought I liked “pink” drinks, but this sparkling is beautifully balanced, dry, and always goes down a storm when I take it to a celebration. They’ve done a fantastic job, and this rosé really shows what can be achieved by working hand-in-hand with your vineyard.
Jörg Geiger Rosenzauber
Made by the longstanding German drinks maker Jörg Geiger, this is my autumn favourite, fruity and light with plenty of complexity and length. It pairs perfectly with a lamb roast and dessert.
Moderato Colombard
New technology is making alcohol-free wines so much better, and this white was one of the first that would stop everyday wine drinkers in their tracks. It’s so exciting to see wines by grape varietal coming onto the market.
Saicho Hojicha
In reality, I’m a bigger tea nerd than an alcohol-free drinks expert, so drinks that use, and rely on, the full flavour of tea varieties always win in my book. Hojicha is an amazing roasted Japanese tea, and this sparkling tea from Saicho creates a nutty, smoky drink. It pairs beautifully with cheese and dessert – two of my other favourite things!
Everleaf Mountain
Conservation biologist Paul Mathew was one of the first on the market with Everleaf and they are great advocates for the whole category. In my new appreciation for pink drinks I love the sweetness from the cherry blossom, and then the bitter note that comes from the rosehip at the end. It makes great cocktails and is perfect spritzed with tonic. I always keep a small bottle in my bag.
Three Spirit Nightcap
It does exactly what it says on the bottle. The liquorice root, valerian and lemon balm makes for a very relaxing combination with some nice heat from the ginger. There’s always a bottle in the fridge of what I believe is the best digestif on the market and a great slow sipper over ice before bed.
Smiling Wolf Aperitivo
Like Three Spirit, it’s part of the new wave of “feel-good” spirits with nootropic ingredients. This expression is great for making a mood-enhancing Negroni. You can see I’m a fan of the bittersweet styles of alcohol-free spirits!
Goodrays Blood Orange
I really like CBD drinks for the sense of relaxation they give. Goodrays not only has flavours that are right in my wheelhouse, but also 30mg of CBD in each can. I love taking one for the interval at the theatre or a concert!
