I don't know anyone who drinks without the intention of getting drunk, but suppose there was someone, that person could just buy alcohol-free drinks. The same way that I'm sure you would buy lactose-free milk if it was available because that's easier than taking the pill.
There's no shortage of people in these threads who find value in having an alcoholic beverage without the intention of getting drunk, with a variety of reasons stated. I don't need to understand their motivations to appreciate the fact that these motivations exist.
And, no, drinking lactose-free milk isn't "easier" for me than "taking the pill."
1. Lactose-free milk is very available to me. But I do not buy it because it costs me around 2-4x as much by volume compared to regular milk, which is much harder on my pocketbook than the combination of drinking regular milk and eating a $0.10 tablet (which I can get down to $0.06 by buying in larger quantities, if I choose). This has parallels to things like NA beer, wherein: Regular beer can be very cheap, but NA beer is never quite that way.
2. Lactase tablets are much, much more portable than lactose-free milk is. It's very easy to bring some with me when I travel, whereas bringing along lactose-free milk has obvious problems. This portability has parallels with the thing discussed in TFA.
3. Lactose-free milk does not taste like regular milk. Its flavor profile is related, and it can be enjoyed, but it remains different and I strongly prefer regular milk. Even without issues #1 and #2, buying and drinking lactose-free milk can only be "easier" if I'm somehow willing to overlook the fact these are not the same things. This concept has parallels in the discussions that others have here in these threads, wherein people report that regular drinks and NA drinks do not taste the same.
If people drank only to get drunk bars would go out of business instantly. A single drink made with a rail liquor pays for the whole bottle. Like it or not, sharing alcoholic beverages is a social bonding experience for many people, and for connoisseurs, alcohol-free substitutes for those beverages don't have anything close to the depth and quality, but for many reasons, being drunk isn't always desirable. That's why people spit out the wine at wine tastings.
There are a whole lot of people that get a whole lot out of consuming beverages that contain alcohol while not wanting to become intoxicated. Your use case doesn't involve that, but as someone who spent decades working in the food and bev industry, I assure you that you can't generalize your use case to everyone.
If what you're saying is true, bars should sell just as much fruit juice as they do booze. If it's true, then no one should mind being the designated driver. I don't know if you've ever been out for drinks, but the reason you go is to get drunk. Sometimes you want to be more on the tipsy end than on the blackout end, but that is still drinking. The difference between drinking and a tea party is alcohol, and it blows my mind that you don't think that's significant. The people who want to meet up and drink something without alcohol go to cafés, not bars. There's a good reason why these two things haven't been combined.
> If what you're saying is true, bars should sell just as much fruit juice as they do booze.
No-- sharing alcoholic beverages is symbolic in a way fruit juice is not.
> If it's true, then no one should mind being the designated driver.
No-- many people enjoy being intoxicated and sharing alcoholic beverages is an important social bonding exercise to many.
> I don't know if you've ever been out for drinks, but the reason you go is to get drunk.
I worked in bars and nightclubs as a bouncer and bartender for nearly two decades and was a 4-or-5-days-per-week regular in them for about a decade. After not having been to bars frequently in at least 5 years, I've got at least half a dozen bars I could walk into right now and not pay for alcohol. I might know more about this than anyone you've ever met.
> Sometimes you want to be more on the tipsy end than on the blackout end, but that is still drinking. The difference between drinking and a tea party is alcohol, and it blows my mind that you don't think that's significant.
I did not even intimate that drinking alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages isn't significantly different. What you seem to miss is that it's not different in the same way for everybody. Our preferences and experiences can't simply be superimposed on everyone else.
> The people who want to meet up and drink something without alcohol go to cafés, not bars.
Some do. My wife doesn't really drink, hates the smell of coffee, and worked in the service industry for 25 years. When she wants to meet up with friends, she goes to a bar. Not only is it the traditional meeting venue among people we know, it's got an entirely different energy than a cafe does. Usually she drinks seltzer with lemon, but sometimes she has a cocktail because she loves the social act of drinking together and thinks they taste delicious, but always regrets the grogginess, headaches, and other side-effects she gets from alcohol. Sometimes when there's a big round of shots going around-- a very common social bonding tradition, especially among service industry workers-- she often feels compelled to hide the fact that she surreptitiously slipped me the shot because I have a much higher tolerance. I discretely hand the empty glass back to her and she puts it down. This has happened literally dozens of times. If there was a way for her to partake in the shot or have a cocktail with friends while not having the requisite physical effects, she'd jump on it.
Beyond that, bartenders doing shots with customers is a huge money maker. When customers feel like they're having an experience with a bartender rather than one provided by a bartender, it's an entirely different experience. It's more fun for the customers, sometimes more fun for the bartenders, and usually elicits much bigger tips. A bartender being able to consume a bunch of alcohol and maintain coherency would be a huge boon. Right now, a lot of them just do a bunch of coke or chew on adderall-- beyond maybe 30 that loses its appeal pretty quickly. That's what the line cooks did in an 'edgy' place I cooked at with an open kitchen where customers could buy the kitchen staff beer. We were expected to drink it and look like we're having fun in an extremely high-volume, high-performance kitchen. Lots of key bumps and popped pills would be replaced with a product that made it unnecessary.
> There's a good reason why these two things haven't been combined.
... they haven't? Some cafes serve alcohol-- several coffee/pastry shops in my city serve wine and cocktails. Even a few of the breakfast/lunch focused diners have full bars. Brunch is essentially breakfast with optional cocktails. Some bars serve coffee. I worked as a chef at a little rock club that was a portuguese expat bar during the day-- old timers would line up outside at 8am waiting for the doors to open up so they could sip espresso, read the newspaper, and chat. Some would occasionally have a brandy at some point, some would stay for lunch and have a beer. Many wouldn't, and were just there for the community.
One of the most popular nightclubs in a city I lived in opened at 2am-- after the legally mandated last call time-- and they never sold one drop of alcohol. Some people went there to use other kinds of drugs. Lots of people went there who didn't drink but enjoyed being in a nightclub atmosphere without the pressure to drink. Some were recovering alcoholics. Some just wanted to dance after other clubs had closed and drank a lot beforehand. Some were underage and it was the only club they could get into. Some tried to sneak their own alcohol in, though security was necessarily tight for legal reasons and they rarely succeeded.
One large raucous club I bounced at was near several large colleges. Knowing it was a magnet for bad behavior, the sports teams would send in members of their disciplinary staff undercover to spy on students-- I'll bet many of them would jump at the opportunity to drink something other than soda while finely controlling their intoxication level. Hell, I'll bet the higher-performing athletes would relish the opportunity to go to a frat party and drink alcohol as a social exercise without totally screwing up their training schedule. It would certainly make hazing a lot safer.
People's relationship with alcohol is just not that cut-and-dried. It's an incredibly complex topic, and you can't just take your experience and use case for something and superimpose it on the rest of humanity.
> No-- sharing alcoholic beverages is symbolic in a way fruit juice is not.
> No-- many people enjoy being intoxicated and sharing alcoholic beverages is an important social bonding exercise to many.
Okay so I feel like you didn't really get my argument here. I said "if X, then Y", but it's obvious that Y isn't the case, so I'm implying that X also isn't true. So you informing my that Y isn't true hasn't added much to the conversation. An alcoholic drink without alcohol is just juice, the fact that there is no demand for juice at bars suggests that there would also be little demand for non-alcoholic drinks. Especially when you have to consume some weird gel afterwards. I was refuting your point by saying it implied something which isn't true. This is known as "reductio ad absurdum" and is a fairly common argumentative tactic.
> I might know more about this than anyone you've ever met.
Just because you've sold people drinks doesn't mean you understand why people buy them. I think you probably don't given you think this weird gel stuff could ever be popular.
> sometimes she has a cocktail because she loves the social act of drinking together and thinks they taste delicious
Alcohol-free cocktails exist. They are called "mocktails" and are very popular if I understand correctly. What the gel offers is the experience of a mocktail with the addition of a strange chemical jelly substance that you have to eat. No one is going to buy that.
> she often feels compelled to hide the fact that she surreptitiously slipped me the shot because I have a much higher tolerance
So now she will feel compelled to hide the fact that she's eating the gel. You've just shifted the problem forward a few seconds. Either she drinks, or she doesn't drink and hides it. Changing the mechanism of how it's hidden doesn't change the fact that she's hiding it. This is a product that simply sounds good in theory without offering much practically.
> having an experience with a bartender
It's fun because the bartender is getting drunk. If the bartender was just taking shots of water, I don't think it would work as well. A shot of Vodka minus the alcohol is essentially a shot of water with a funny aftertaste, which is what you are proposing. I suppose you could trick customers into tipping this way by hiding the gel, but you could also do that by discretely swapping a shot out for plain water. I just think people would get a little suspicious if the bartender is knocking back shots and not getting drunk.
> I'll bet the higher-performing athletes would relish the opportunity to go to a frat party and drink alcohol as a social exercise without totally screwing up their training schedule
Again, you assume that drinking liquid is the social aspect, but it isn't. The social thing, as you have said earlier, is getting drunk which this gel prevents. If you drink a glass of cider then down this gel, you have just drunk a glass of apple juice, and as we've established, juice and alcohol have different social purposes.
> Just because you've sold people drinks doesn't mean you understand why people buy them. I think you probably don't given you think this weird gel stuff could ever be popular.
A) Saying that as a decades-long professional in this business that I don't understand people's motivation for purchasing the product is pretty ridiculous. It's not like I was a distiller-- understanding why, when, where and how people consumed alcohol was why I was successful in that business. Beyond that, monitoring peoples alcohol consumption is a critical part of the job.
B) As I said, I spent over a decade as a 4-5 night per week regular in bars.
C) As a bouncer, I specifically engaged with the way people use alcohol and interact in situations not just selling it to them.
I deeply understand what goes on on both sides of the bar. It was my profession and hobby.
> An alcoholic drink without alcohol is just juice, the fact that there is no demand for juice at bars suggests that there would also be little demand for non-alcoholic drinks.
> Alcohol-free cocktails exist. They are called "mocktails" and are very popular if I understand correctly.
I think we're just about done here. Have a nice day.
Sorry-- you're just completely, factually wrong. It's not just the market where I am, either. I just did a google search for "best mocktails in [New York/London/Paris/Los Angeles]" and every one of the top articles almost exclusively highlighted bars or restaurants with bars-- all establishments that primarily serve alcoholic cocktails. If that's not true where you are, where you are is not representative. If you don't believe me, Google "why do people drink mocktails" and honestly consider if your assumptions match your research.
Because they taste good. Does this gel taste good? Probably not. It is fundamentally unpleasant, pointless, and strange. It solves a problem that has better solutions everyone is familiar with. It offers people nothing but discomfort and abnormality, and worse most people don't even understand what it does. It is perhaps the epitome of an unmarketable product.
Well, you seem really committed to not challenging your assumption that your perspective on this is universal despite my presenting plenty of evidence to the contrary. I've explained my expertise and shown you how to confirm my understanding of the topic with entirely unrelated sources, and you've inexplicably disregarded both. If you think that your understanding of this issue is somehow reflects reality more accurately than stacks of articles from food and beverage magazines that literally say the opposite, you've clearly already reached your conclusion and aren't entertaining any contrary information. There's obviously no productive path for this conversation to continue.
I really hope you reflect on whether you're more interested in being right, or feeling right, because the difference is consequential.
> shown you how to confirm my understanding of the topic with entirely unrelated sources
You told me to Google it. I'll make a guess that you aren't the academic type, but trust me when I say that generally isn't accepted as a source.
> I really hope you reflect on whether you're more interested in being right, or feeling right, because the difference is consequential.
And what's brilliant is that I can both be and feel correct in the knowledge that this stuff will never be popular. You'd struggle to give it away for free, let alone get people to pay for it.
> you aren't entertaining any contrary information
I've entertained plenty of contrary information and explained why I don't believe it. You've addressed almost nothing I've said except by making spurious claims that you working as a bartender more than half a decade ago somehow means you are psychically in tune with people, and they all went to eat weird anti-alcohol jelly.
I really hope you can reflect on how to make actually convincing arguments for your perspective instead of just calling people stupid and flaunting your """experience""" while ignoring everything you are told.
> If what you're saying is true, bars should sell just as much fruit juice as they do booze.
No-- sharing alcoholic beverages is symbolic in a way fruit juice is not.
> If it's true, then no one should mind being the designated driver.
No-- many people enjoy being intoxicated and sharing alcoholic beverages is an important social bonding exercise to many.
> I don't know if you've ever been out for drinks, but the reason you go is to get drunk.
I worked in bars and nightclubs as a bouncer and bartender for nearly two decades and was a 4-or-5-days-per-week regular in them for about a decade. After not having been to bars frequently in at least 5 years, I've got at least half a dozen bars I could walk into right now and not pay for alcohol. I might know more about drinking in public than anyone you've ever met.
> Sometimes you want to be more on the tipsy end than on the blackout end, but that is still drinking. The difference between drinking and a tea party is alcohol, and it blows my mind that you don't think that's significant.
Maybe you should re-read what I wrote. Not once did I even intimate that drinking alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages isn't significantly different. What you don't seem to realize is that it's not different in the same way for everybody. Believe it or not, you can't generalize your preferences and experiences to everyone else. You just can't.
> The people who want to meet up and drink something without alcohol go to cafés, not bars.
Some do. My wife doesn't really drink, hates the smell of coffee, and worked in the service industry for 25 years. When she wants to meet up with friends, she goes to a bar. Not only is it the traditional meeting venue among people we know, it's got an entirely different energy than a cafe does. Usually she drinks seltzer with lemon, but sometimes she has a cocktail because she loves the social act of drinking together and thinks they taste delicious, but always regrets the grogginess, headaches, and other side-effects she gets from alcohol. Sometimes when there's a big round of shots going around-- a very common social bonding tradition, especially among service industry workers-- she often feels compelled to hide the fact that she surreptitiously slipped me the shot because I have a much higher tolerance. I discretely hand the empty glass back to her and she puts it down. This has happened literally dozens of times. If there was a way for her to partake in the shot or have a cocktail with friends while not having the requisite physical effects, she'd jump on it.
Beyond that, bartenders doing shots with customers is a huge money maker. When customers feel like they're having an experience with a bartender rather than one provided by a bartender, it's an entirely different experience. It's more fun for the customers, sometimes more fun for the bartenders, and usually elicits much bigger tips. A bartender being able to consume a bunch of alcohol and maintain coherency would be a huge boon. Right now, a lot of them just do a bunch of coke or chew on adderall-- beyond maybe 30 that loses its appeal pretty quickly. That's what the line cooks did in an 'edgy' place I cooked at with an open kitchen where customers could buy the kitchen staff beer. We were expected to drink it and look like we're having fun in an extremely high-volume, high-performance kitchen. Lots of key bumps and popped pills would be replaced with a product that made it unnecessary.
> There's a good reason why these two things haven't been combined.
... they haven't? Some cafes serve alcohol-- several coffee/pastry shops in my city serve wine and cocktails. Even a few of the breakfast/lunch focused diners have full bars. Brunch is essentially breakfast with optional cocktails. Some bars serve coffee. I worked as a chef at a little rock club that was a portuguese expat bar during the day-- old timers would line up outside at 8am waiting for the doors to open up so they could sip espresso, read the newspaper, and chat. Some would occasionally have a brandy at some point, some would stay for lunch and have a beer. Many wouldn't, and were just there for the community.
One of the most popular nightclubs in a city I lived in opened at 2am-- after the legally mandated last call time-- and they never sold one drop of alcohol. Some people went there to use other kinds of drugs. Lots of people went there who didn't drink but enjoyed being in a nightclub atmosphere without the pressure to drink. Some were recovering alcoholics. Some just wanted to dance after other clubs had closed and drank a lot beforehand. Some were underage and it was the only club they could get into. Some tried to sneak their own alcohol in, though security was necessarily tight for legal reasons and they rarely succeeded.
One large raucous club I bounced at was near several large colleges. Knowing it was a magnet for bad behavior, the sports teams would send in members of their disciplinary staff undercover to spy on students-- I'll bet many of them would jump at the opportunity to drink something other than soda while finely controlling their intoxication level. Hell, I'll bet the higher-performing athletes would relish the opportunity to go to a frat party and drink alcohol as a social exercise without totally screwing up their training schedule. It would certainly make hazing a lot safer.
People's relationship with alcohol is just not that cut-and-dried. It's an incredibly complex topic, and you can't just take your experience and use case for something and superimpose it on the rest of humanity. It just doesn't work like that.
You know far less about this topic than you think you do.
It's great to share your in-depth experience here, but can you please do that without swipes or crossing into personal attack? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I'm talking about bits like these:
> Maybe you should re-read what I wrote
> What you don't seem to realize
> You know far less about this topic than you think you do
They don't add to your substantive points, but they do poison the conversation and almost always evoke worse from others. We're trying to avoid that here.
