Dry January. It’s become such a hot trend as people come out of the holiday season and decide to “take a break”. Then there are the legions who decide to stop drinking entirely, whether it’s a healthy choice or for those where alcohol becomes problematic in their life.
Peder Schweigert was a part of Marvel Bar, one of the most acclaimed cocktail destinations in the Midwest. Then Schweigert decided to quit drinking.
How does a man who made his living serving (and tasting) alcoholic drinks remain a bartender? He shifted his focus to non-alcoholic drinks or "mocktails".
Scweigert joined Jason DeRusha for DeRusha Eats to talk about this exploding new market.
Jason DeRusha: The story of you as a bartender making that choice, a choice that many people are thinking about or at least dabbling in this month with dry January, what benefits did you get from giving up drinking?
Peder Schweigert: I mean, my mind was more free and open to the every day. Somebody once told me that they really felt sympathy for people who drink because they always have to be aware of how much they've had to drink every time they leave the house. You know, am I okay to drive? That's a burden that I don't have to face anymore. I drink a whole bunch of non-alcoholic drinks, and the worst thing I have to worry about is where the next bathroom is. And so I'm always good to drive and I'm always good to be my best self.
DeRusha: Tell us about Dry Wit (Schweigert’s new business venture).
Schweigert: So we, a couple years ago at the start of the pandemic, the bar closed down (Marvel Bar which was part of Bachelor Farmer). I made the decision to go back to school full-time. I graduated with a bachelor's in psychology from Metro State and along with the rest of the free time, I started working on a line of non-alcoholic drinks with my business partner. So we've been about two years in the making and we have bottles sitting in a warehouse right now that are just waiting on labels. That's kind of this perpetual, I think we gave the first approval eight weeks ago, and so we're still just waiting for the labels to drop. But, we developed a line of non-alcoholic wine alternatives. My partner was pregnant at the time. I was developing these, and a lot of the ingredients that go into things that are non-alcoholic aren't safe to drink while you're pregnant. I also don't drink caffeine. I'm a really good quitter. So the caffeinated beverages, you know, tea's really incredible. It's complex, it's fermented. Most of the products in this space, or many of the products in this space, have caffeine in them. So we just kept on like finding things we didn't want in our product and narrowing down the recipes, winnowing it down to as few ingredients as possible to let everything shine.
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DeRusha: Non-alcoholic drinks, for a long time, your only option was like an O’Doul’s and a beer. We have a guest coming on next week who's going to talk about her whole store, Marigold, which is all non-alcoholic drinks. This explosion has really happened recently, though, and I would say even when you were experimenting at Marvel Bar with non-alcoholic cocktails, or mocktails, I think we all struggle with what the right thing to call this stuff so we don't make it sound like it's a juice. or a while I always felt like if you had non-alcoholic drinks at a bar, it was either super sweet or you were basically just drinking tonic. It was sort of one, one extreme or the other.
Schweigert: Yeah. And I think that's part of the challenge. There's no real formula for what this looks like. You know, with beer, it's getting harder and harder to innovate, right? Like, you have to start adding fruit purees or there's all these trends that come up. It's still at its core just beer. But with non-alcoholic drinks, it could be anything. And so that's exciting. It's a little challenging too because you really can do anything.
DeRusha: Wine is your model?
Schweigert: Yeah. And to be clear, we're not wine. We're not making and fermenting grape juice. The process of fermentation, the sugar in the grapes is eaten up and it turns into alcohol and that is how the wine itself dries out and isn't sickly sweet. Fresh grape juice is pretty sweet on the whole, right? So in order to replicate that, you kind of have to reinvent it because you can't just take grape juice and buy it and then just assume it's going to be dry and interesting. You kind of have to take a different path there. And some people do make wine and then take the alcohol out, and I've had some delicious versions and I've had some okay versions.
DeRusha: True of alcoholic wine too by the way.
Schweigert: Absolutely. There's a local company that takes the alcohol out and they do a lot of work locally and nationally with beer companies. But they also just got their winery license this year or last year and so they're now taking the alcohol out of wine as well. And the products I've had from them, and some others who are doing work like them, are just incredible. But again, that's not our mindset.
DeRusha: We're seeing with more interest non-alcoholic drinks that you get at retail. There's non-alcoholic kind of riffs on gin and whiskey, and certainly on wine and all sorts of other drinks. Why do you think it's important, especially as people go out to restaurants or even bars, why do you think it's important to have these sorts of N/A options for people?
Schweigert: First and foremost it's about making your guests feel comfortable. I mean, there's a limit. I don't think every restaurant needs to be as accommodating to kids as some are, but you've got adults coming in who want to sit down and are intensely focused on flavor. They come to many restaurants because of their reputation, because how great they are, and they want beverages that match the food. And a lot of us aren't used to getting that.
From a business perspective, it's not just about taking care of people who don't drink, it's about taking care of everybody. Because at any given moment, we all don't drink alcohol. The ethanol’s just one component of this, of all of the things that we drink. We drink coffee, and robust coffee programs are showing up places. We drink tea. People get really nerdy about tea. We drink water, we drink milk. There's all sorts of things that we drink that don't have ethanol in them. To take them and combine them into new and interesting ways, so that guests are who are coming into your restaurant can have a drink, they can come in and have an old fashioned. They can sit down for a meal. They can have two drinks without alcohol in them, and then they have a glass of red wine with their main course. Then they end the meal with an espresso or something. Then they're on their way home, and that time, if you took out any of the drinks without alcohol in them, they're only drinking two drinks because they still want to be able to drive. You can just really continue to go above and beyond to make people happy and comfortable and welcome in your space.
DeRusha: I was asking about when we're going to be able to see Dry Wit out there and what does it taste like. How would you describe it to people?
Schweigert: I mean, we have bottles ready to sell. We're just waiting on labels, and they're assuring us that Friday the labels will be printed. Then they'll ship up from Ohio. So hopefully sometime next week. Your guest next week, Aaron from Marigold, that'll be the first place we launch in. And then a variety of restaurants and liquor stores around town as well as any place that has a cooler, really. We don't have alcohol in our products, so it's okay to sell.
You could, you could sell Dry Wit out of the back of your car with the right permit, which is certainly an option in our business plan, in my car driving around selling Dry Wit.
You can find out more about Dry Wit on their Instagram page.
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