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As ‘sober curious’ trend grows, major brands tap into non-alcoholic drinks - National | Globalnews.ca (globalnews.ca)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 35 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I was trying to escape beer to save money, but at $2 a can non-alcoholic is even more expensive despite seemingly less taxes needing to be paid.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Is non-alcoholic beer reallly more expensive than the regular? In Europe they're on par in most places. In Northern Europe (Norway, Denmark) it's even significantly cheaper due to taxes.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes, it tends to be pricier. It's not addictive, so they need bigger margins that they can't make up in volume.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It’s actually a more costly process to make non alcoholic beer, than with alcohol.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    The process? Distillation method, sure. Limited fermentation, fermentation free, and dilution are quite similar to their alcoholised counterparts.

    The ingredient/supply costs for non-alcoholic beer is more expensive; which is mostly a volume thing, but their is a portion of that related to precision required for a near-beer not required for a normal beer.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    My initial assumption was that it's because it's newer, so they need to make up that r&d cost (edit: I get why this is silly now). Once there is a lot more competition for it, the prices should come down. Similar to how some plant based meats / milks or gluten-free products became more accessible once general people started buying them instead of a tiny group that could be exploited more easily.

    I'm just hoping for fewer drunk driving accidents and reduced health issues

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Oh boy you are painfully optimistic about capitalism

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let us not forget, 1 trillion types of non alcoholic drinks already exist.

    People don’t event know when they a being marketed.

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  • [+] -2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)
    • Water
    • Tea (and just the camellia sinensis part of this is already a bewildering variety of flavour, aroma, and mouthfeel profiles!)
    • Coffee (almost as much variety in flavour, aroma, and mouthfeels)
    • Tisanes (a.k.a. "herbal tea", and since practically any dried herb or flower can be made into a tisane for infusion, the variety here is absolutely off the charts!)
    • Rooibus
    • ...

    Like seriously, dude. If you think you've had even a tiny fraction of traditional non-alcoholic drinks you've been had. *

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    R&D cost lol, there’s no such thing. That’s what companies want you to believe so they can upsell medicine and technology.

    This is just another market rife for capitalism to ensnare. Some guy crunched the numbers and found that x% don’t drink at events. So to recoup that lost revenue, they made this. The drinks, the ads, the news articles that cover it. All planted to drive up their bottom line.

    Because that’s how businesses work. They find an angle and swoop in and start setting up payment systems to see what people will begrudgingly pay for.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 years ago*

    I was equating them, probably incorrectly, to things like plant based meat companies that did have to consider margins till they could scale up.

    But yes I guess a major conglomerate doesn't have that constraint, and it's probably not that hard to make something that tastes like X beer without alcohol

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Non-alcoholic beer is older than most of the people in this thread commenting¹. There's no more "R&D cost" involved in making it. If they're charging more for the non-alcoholic than the alcoholic, it's just straight-up greed.

    ¹ Source: I was drinking this shit when I was 12—45 years ago, in other words—and even then it was old news!

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