BCBusiness

The scent of subtle, orange-tinged essential oil welcomes me into the space, which, I estimate, couldn't comfortably fit more than 20 people. Amid plants hanging high and low, founder Angela Hansen stands behind a wooden counter that resembles a home bar, helping a customer check out their basketful of beverages. Here, tucked into a small retail space across from Grand view Park on Vancou- ver's Commercial Drive, is Mocktails, the city's first non- alcoholic liquor store. The store's shelves, cabinets and trolleys (many of them vintage) are packed with glassware and alcohol-free drinks, ranging from wine and beer to cocktails and spirits. Local products, like Nonny Beer and Edna's, are easy to find. On an earlier phone call, Leigh and Lane Matkovich— the brothers who launched Nonny—tell me that their brand is growing fast. It had spread from 200 stores in 2022 to over 400 by the end of 2023. Now you can find it in bars and breweries around B.C., at Michelin-starred restaurants like AnnaLena and Published on Main, at chains like Fresh St. Market and London Drugs and even at several liquor stores— not just the zero-proof ones. When I ask about the inspira- tion behind the product, Lane says, "We're both really big beer fans and we're active people, but we realize that alcohol isn't always a positive addition to the lifestyle that we're looking for... So we selfishly created a brand that we wanted to see in the market and that we could use as a tool to moderate our alcohol intake." The pandemic could be res- ponsible for shifting attitudes toward health and alcohol, or it could be a natural shift in collective consciousness. In 2023, Health Canada updated its 2011 alcohol guidelines to specify that no amount of alco- hol is safe and that any more than two drinks per week puts you at risk for cancer and other diseases. But is the alcohol-free life- style a temporary fad? As the Matkovich brothers embarked on their first entre- preneurial venture together (prior to this, Lane spent three years at Shopify and Leigh spent five at Vancouver's Electric Bicycle Brewing), their own understanding of the term "non-alcoholic" started to evolve. "The name Nonny comes from a slang term we used THE NBOX i OVER THE INFLUENCE Non-alcoholic beverage sales are on the rise and B.C. brands are flooding into the market by Rushmila Rahman R E TA I L 13 B C B U S I N E S S . C A J U LY/A U G U S T 2 0 24 Ta n y a G o e h r i n g ; Illu s t r a t i o n : J a n ik S ö ll n e r/ N o u n P r oj e c t growing up to refer to non- alcoholic beers, and that was typically in a negative sense," Lane explains. "We were skeptics before and now I think it's a really important part of making that communal shift [away] from everything being very alcohol-centric." Similarly, Edna's co-founder Nick Devine—who has been involved in the Vancouver bar and restaurant scene for decades with the Cascade Company, the group behind El Camino's and Main Street Brewing—launched his alcohol- free cocktail brand in 2022 to fill a gap in the market. "Non-alcoholic was a really underwhelming category," he says. "I'd be in bars where the alcohol selection is enormous BOTTOMS UP Mocktails founder Angela Hansen says her store is one of the top buyers of non-alcoholic drinks in B.C. " Everyone deserves access to this stuff. People who don't drink or are sober-curious or are taking medications, pregnant women—it's just so nice to have one shop to go to."

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