> 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.
> 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.