My name is Matthew Kaner and I used to own wine bars. It was my identity for so long. In fact, I’m known as “the wine guy” to a lot of people. When I made the decision to transition out of wine bar ownership, I had ideas of what a consulting life could look like but there was truly no guarantee that the opportunities would come across my desk. That said, if you’re not willing to bet on yourself, who will be?! So I jumped off the cliff without knowing if my wings worked, and turns out I can fly pretty well.
In addition to ambassador roles and education around wine brands and regions, a really interesting opportunity in the non-alcoholic space proved to help me expand my own understanding of my capability in consulting. Enter PROXIES, a non-alcoholic wine alternative made in Ontario, Canada.
I know wine, but does that mean I know non-alc?
Turns out, there are a lot of similarities between how I’ve chosen to approach wine messaging throughout my career and how the team behind PROXIES messaged their intentional beverage that was driven by food science. I jumped on board and experienced a quick learning curve for all things non-alcoholic.
Joining forces with Proxies in September 2021 gave me a few months to reach out to my network of amazing wine directors, sommeliers, and journalists around the USA to gauge their interest and hopefully get samples into their hands! This all leading up to the holiday season and, more importantly for the non-alcoholic category, Dry January.
A little historical context – The 2021 holiday season was pretty tough for restaurants/wine bars/hospitality because of COVID rearing its head again. Here in Los Angeles, we were forced to revert back to to-go only for a period of time, after the outdoor dining resolution was truly the only thing keeping the populous sane and us from losing our businesses. So a return to shop-like environment meant many operators didn’t want to encourage the Dry January crowd or a non-drinking air because let’s be real here, wine bars and restaurants make their money on selling BOOZE.
So needless to say, Dry January 2022 was lackluster. We didn’t let that get us down because there’s always next time, and in 2023 we came at Dry January with a FURY!
31 days. Short, when put in cosmic terms. But one full 31-day month is a huge opportunity to get in front of new customers, forge new retail and on-premise business opportunities, and capitalize on meme marketing that can create a snowball of momentum big enough to permeate the culture in a lasting way. I believe we did that in January 2023. The entire non-alcoholic industry pushed the narrative ahead. It’s not a post-COVID trend. It’s here to stay. We moved the needle all over the country with events basically every single day for the entire month. Tastings in store, at wine bars, on tasting menus are excellent restaurants, and pairing events pushing the boundaries of what the populus believes the non-alc category is capable of. It’s time to re-define what this category means.
After all, there are seven days in the week! Maybe a glass of non-alcoholic wine alternative is great for your Monday through Wednesday while you sip on a Sancerre Thursday through Sunday. The ritual is something we don’t want to disturb. We only want to enhance its strength and meaning.
Happy sipping!
Learn more about the author, Matthew Kaner.
