The largest, dedicated non-alcoholic (NA) beer maker in the U.S. is attempting to put a new spin on “Dry January.”
Athletic Brewing Company has launched “Athletic January,” a new campaign that puts the brand’s name at the forefront of a month in which many consumers abstain from alcohol.
Athletic co-founder Bill Shufelt told Brewbound that the campaign is aimed at driving excitement in on- and off-premise retailers at the start of the year.
“We wiped out the word ‘dry’ because we want it to be industry-positive for all three tiers, both on- and off-premise,” he said. “Rather than encouraging people to skip the industry and skip fun for a month, realize that you can drink a lot of beer even while you’re doing a healthy reset.”
January is historically Athletic’s “high water mark” annually for sales, Shufelt shared. Similar to full-strength beer, Athletic’s business also picks up in the summer months, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
“All the same big beer weeks are our [Athletic’s] same weeks throughout the rest of the year, but January just creates a higher baseline for our business every year,” he said.
“We’re not trying to pull people into sobriety or anything,” he continued. “We’re trying to give them a lot more beer and let them enjoy beer and a lot of new occasions.”
The first quarter of the year is historically the slowest time for beer sales. A mid-December consumer survey by Numerator found that 10% of respondents plan to reduce substance use, including alcohol, in 2025.
Insights firm IWSR reported that 64% of consumers claim they’re moderating their consumption, while polling by Coefficient Capital found that 26% of U.S. consumers plan to drink less in 2025 and 36% expect to cut back or eliminate alcohol in January.
Athletic January will be a “multi-million dollar strategic” 360-degree marketing program, including “high-impact television” advertising, streaming audio and podcast ads, digital media, influencer marketing and out-of-home ads in key markets. Part of the campaign will include Ask For Athletic Week (January 10-17), in which 21+ customers can receive a $5 rebate on a 12 oz. can or draft pour of Athletic at retailers nationwide.
Shufelt views the campaign as Athletic’s “way of leading from the front in this industry,” as the company has in investment, growth, marketing and retailer and distributor support.
The NA beer segment “still has a lot of green grass in front of it,” with just 1.5% share of the beer category and a lot of brand awareness left to build for both the segment and Athletic, Shufelt said.
Shufelt sees an opportunity to grow NA beer in channels where the segment underindexes, such as independent retailers and the on-premise bars and restaurants, which he called “an enormous opportunity.”
In the on-premise channel, some of Athletic’s distributor partners have yet to capture more than 5% of the on-premise universe, Shufelt said. Last year, the company’s NA beer was sold in more than 30,000 on-premise accounts.
“Our team is opening a lot of doors” and has “probably served about 150,000 customers on tap so far,” with kegs available in about three dozen markets, Shufelt said.
Shufelt admitted that draft NA beer remains “a really tough sell” for some retailers, but Athletic has made inroads due to its focus on food safety.
“Fomenting that a little bit though is it [NA] is a very contract brewed and imported category, which doesn’t lend itself to non-alcoholic beer on draft,” Shufelt added. “We do hear a lot of people on the outside looking in criticizing it to the industry. So we’ve done the work over a multi-year period to feel really good about it.”
Looking back at 2024, Shufelt told Brewbound that last year was “by far” Athletic’s “biggest dollar growth year of our company history,” which has been a recurring trend since the brewery’s 2017 founding.
Athletic ranked as the 24th largest beer category vendor year-to-date through
December 1 in off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm Circana. Dollar sales topped $86.7 million through the first 11 months of the year, a +66.6% increase versus 2023, with volume, measured in case sales, increasing +71.4%. The majority of those sales – more than $68.8 million – were made in the grocery channel, where Athletic ranked as the 15th largest beer category vendor.
Heading into 2025, Athletic boasts the most capacity it has ever had, following a $20 million expansion of its Connecticut production brewery completed in March that expanded the location’s maximum capacity to 450,000 barrels.
“Most of those tanks are full and cranking into January,” Shufelt said.
Athletic is also in the midst of its West Coast build out of the former Ballast Point production facility, which is expected to be completed in late 2025. The addition brings Athletic’s total annual capacity to 1 million barrels, the company shared at the time of the acquisition.
Shufelt said there are “significant renovations” to the West Coast building with “a lot of food safety, quality equipment,” including a high-speed canning line, to make “Athletic-quality non-alcoholic beer” in the facility.
“A lot of our company’s history, we’ve been at [our] manufacturing limit trying to scale steel tanks and canning lines ahead of the summer, so we’re a little in front of it this year,” Shufelt said.
Even as the NA beer segment grows, Shufelt noted that around 70% of that growth in NA beer is coming from five brands, which also account for around 60% of the segment’s sales.
“It’s not like hard seltzer, where there’s a billion dollars spilling out for people to grab every year,” he said. “There’s a lot less retail space. It’s a lot less a percentage of overall retail sales. We are doing a lot of heavy lifting as a team and as an industry. We formed the ANBA [Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association] group.
“We’re building off a great foundation, but we’re not out here buying Super Bowl ads too. It is very brick-by-brick.”