If you think that no- and low-alcohol drinks are for dull people enjoying a quiet life, you haven\u2019t met Laura Willoughby MBE. Considered the British pioneer of the alcohol-free movement, she founded Club Soda in 2015, that\u2019s been billed as the world\u2019s largest mindful drinking brand and dubbed: \u201cWeight Watchers, but with booze.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Drinks Retailing\u2019s latest Top 100 Most Influential People in Drink (UK).<\/p>\n 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? \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Willoughby\u2019s focus is on making alcohol-free drinks more visible and available to change the way society perceives alcohol and the way that we drink. \u201cI’m a very mission driven person,\u201d she says. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Willoughby says she\u2019s 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. \u201cI talk to lots of people, and I make myself useful,\u201d she says. \u201cChange only happens if everybody’s involved and bringing people together to do things is what helps.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cinfluential rather than an influencer.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cYou become quite boring and quite small when alcohol becomes the focus of your life,\u201d she says. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the era of the ladette, and the peak of wine\u2019s 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 \u2014 women were working too \u2014 couples began sharing wine in the evening in front of the TV and the UK\u2019s \u2018wine generation\u2019 was born.<\/p>\n \u201cAll 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,\u201d Willoughby says. \u201cIt’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\u2019re hitting menopause and they’re all knocking alcohol on its head.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t impressed, describing it as \u201cnot particularly good or even ethical.\u201d Still, even though she came out angry, she\u2019s never drunk since. Anger, she says, is a good motivator for her.<\/p>\n “The UK hospitality sector loses \u00a3800 million by not upgrading people from tap water to something they pay for”, Jeff Israely<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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 \u201canother day when I\u2019d feel better,\u201d which she found genuinely exciting. \u201cWhen I talk about the fact that I prefer who I am now,\u201d she says, \u201cIt’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.\u201d<\/p>\n Willloughby says her focus is on \u201csystemic change,\u201d and not that \u201cwe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Club Soda sells two courses \u2013\u00a0How to Drink Mindfully<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0How to Stop Drinking<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, I\u2019ve made the decision not to drink alcohol anymore, but I\u2019ll always have a boozy dessert. It doesn\u2019t trigger me at all,\u201d she says. \u201cFor 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\u2019re all valid. It means that the biggest market for alcohol-free drinks isn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Willoughby points out that the margins are the same for alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. If someone isn\u2019t 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. \u201cThe UK hospitality sector loses \u00a3800 million by not upgrading people from tap water to something they pay for,\u201d she says. \u201cOn top of that, when people look to book for groups and check a menu in advance, if it doesn\u2019t have something for everyone, they\u2019ll 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\u2019t right for them, everyone loses.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, Club Soda entered a partnership with Majestic Wine to stock Eisberg 0% wines, Moderato Colombard, Colombard ros\u00e9 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\u2019s range of no- and low-alcohol drinks. Sales in this category had already increased by more than 600% at Majestic since March 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cWe act as an agent, taking a percentage but also bringing our expertise about what\u2019s selling well here that might work well at Majestic,\u201d Willoughby says. \u201cWe have regular meetings with all the brands we\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked whether legislation or societal change could make a difference to the category, Willoughby sighs: \u201cMy word, this could be a list as long as your arm. The biggest issue at the moment is that the UK government still hasn\u2019t sorted out what counts as an alcoholic-free drink and what doesn\u2019t. They\u2019ve 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\u2019s one of the biggest shifts that needs to happen, because producers in the UK are working with one arm tied behind their back.\u201d<\/p>\n She adds that the government has also expressed a desire to support the growth of the low- and no-alcohol sector. \u201cBreaks 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\u2019re actually more expensive to make.\u201d<\/p>\n Willoughby says there\u2019s also a lot the hospitality sector can do. \u201cWe 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\u2019t ask what you\u2019d like, he just wandered around topping up wine glasses all evening.\u201d<\/p>\n So beyond legislation, Willoughby concludes: \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\nAn unusual skill set in the drink space<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Influential, not influencer<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Wine generation<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Not interested in eliminating alcohol<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Moderation and mindful drinking<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Category supporting each other<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Biography<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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