Movie theaters and gas stations barely break even selling the product they’re named after — it’s the popcorn and Junior Mints that keep the lights on, or the energy drinks and motor oil at the pump.

These businesses lean on side sales because they can’t charge what their core product is actually worth and stay competitive. The hospitality industry runs on a similar model, and its own version of the Junior Mints — alcohol in all its forms — is losing popularity fast.

Alcohol has shaped the human experience for millennia, but recent polling shows a real shift. According to a consumer sentiment survey by NCSolutions, nearly half of Americans — 49% — said they plan to drink less last year, a 44% increase over 2023. The same report found dry January participation rose 36% year over year, with 30% of consumers taking part in 2025.

Gallup, meanwhile, found only 54% of American adults say they drink at all — the lowest in the poll’s 90-year history. Meanwhile, legal cannabis and psilocybin, along with a wave of adaptogens and nootropics, have expanded what “sober” means: not necessarily abstaining from altered states, just from alcohol specifically. It raises a real question — did alcohol dominate because people preferred it, or because it was the only legal option? And if that legal monopoly is what allows bars and restaurants to build their margins around it, what happens to those margins now that the monopoly’s gone?

Here are a few ways local establishments are getting creative with this sobering change in business model.

Some of the non-alcoholic offerings at Room Service

Troy Bowen for Westword

The Cover Charge Model

Room Service, a new after-hours club on Broadway, is open 1 p.m. to 5 a.m. A cover charge gets you into a lush, pink space — flowers, art, a disco ball, a DJ booth like an altar. But Room Service doesn’t have a liquor license. Bartenders ask “How would you like to feel tonight?” and pull from a stock of drinks made instead from mushrooms, adaptogenics, fruits and teas. Owner Kostas Kouremenos calls it “clean clubbing” and prefers the title “experience curator” rather than club owner.

“Usually drinking is chasing a feeling and just trying to hold on… It’s like you’re trying to get to a place, and then you’re coming down,” he says. “You need to go back up somehow.”

He’s not naive about who’s already in an altered state walking into the club.

“They come in on shrooms because they’re legal now, or they come stoned” he says. “We’re fine with that.”

Many of his products aren’t distributed locally the way alcohol is, so Kostas handles logistics himself, and the drinks aren’t necessarily cheaper than their alcoholic counterparts. The cover charge — standard at most nightclubs anyway — gives him an early cushion against tight margins.

The Producer Perspective

Denver, a frequent “healthiest city” pick, saw the N/A shift early — early enough that Niki Sawni, co-founder of non- and low-alcohol producer Grüvi, chose it as home base in 2019. For Grüvi’s first five years, revenue was almost entirely retail. Today, bar and restaurant sales now account for over 40%. Dealcoholized beverages require the same production process as alcoholic drinks, as well as the extra step to remove the alcohol.

While that makes them more expensive, the cost is offset somewhat by the absence of alcohol taxes. But Niki is blunt that N/A isn’t a margin play.

“Bars and restaurants still need to survive off alcohol sales,” he says.

The real value of N/A options, he says, is keeping a group at the table long enough to order another round of alcohol — not replacing that revenue outright, especially at high-volume bars without a curated drink focus.

“I don’t see restaurants selling any more non-alc than when they have maybe one or two beers, a wine and a mocktail, [versus] someone who spent a ton of time curating eight,” he says. “Now you added four extra beverages with margin and inventory for no additional revenue.”

Sustainability + Service Charge

Guests at Wash Park Italian eatery Restaurant Olivia are greeted with a toast of sparkling wine or, for non-drinkers, Copenhagen Sparkling Tea — a Danish, sommelier-developed bubbly in a Champagne-style bottle.

“There’s never been a better time in human history to be sober… the narrative around it has flipped,” says general manager Jake Niederhauser.

The “Colorado Sober,” (sober, with a marijuana exemption) hospitality veteran treats quality non-alcoholic options as core to the business, not an afterthought. Beyond the restaurant’s Zero Proof menu, the kitchen makes its own shrubs and ferments from scraps that would otherwise be trash — a sustainability move that also supports healthy profit margins.

“That builds a narrative around something that’s in a glass that makes it compelling enough to be worth the [price],” he says. Olivia also adds a 20% service charge, split among staff, to help subsidize labor costs and make up for the alcohol revenue the restaurant no longer collects as reliably as it once did.

A beverage offering at Honey Elixir Bar

Provided by Honey Elixir Bar

Honey Elixir opened in 2019, just as sober curiosity was mostly a Dry January exercise. Its menu is split between cocktails and “potions” — alcohol-free drinks that general manager Collin Soto says are “intentionally crafted to elicit a thought, feeling, or idea.”

Soto puts current sales at “probably 35% non-alcoholic and 65% alcoholic,” with the built cocktail and potion menus nearly evenly split. The non-alcoholic potions are made in-house, taking roughly 12-13 labor hours a week. Beyond THC, CBD and kava options, Honey serves cacao drinks are described as able to “uplift energy, increase circulation, and may even elicit euphoria, love, and joy,” he says.

The strategy pays off in visibility. “If you are in the area and you Google mocktails, we’re one of the first people to pop up,” Soto says.

None of these operators are solving the same problem the same way. Room Service is betting the door charge and clean options can replace a liquor license entirely. Grüvi thinks N/A drinks buy time, not revenue. Restaurant Olivia is subsidizing the gap with kitchen scraps and a service charge. Honey Elixir is spending labor hours to create a deep N/A list that give people a reason to choose Honey over the dive bar next door.

That there’s no single playbook says something on its own: for decades, alcohol’s margins were doing more structural work in this industry than anyone had to think about. Now that it’s not guaranteed, every operator is improvising a different way to cover the gap — proof of just how much weight that one product line used to carry.