Umbrella Dry Bar | 14 W Martin St, Raleigh
I decided to attempt Dry January after a particularly tipsy Christmas Day when I was tasked with helping a much drunker friend home to bed.
Anyone who has ever partied a little too hard has likely sworn off alcohol at least once, but it was witnessing the swaying of my friend that incentivized me to forgo drinks for the first month of the new year. Realizing others may have had to babysit me after one drink too many was an unwelcome epiphany.
Inevitably, giving up beer and wine was immediately harder than I thought. It wasn’t the experience of being drunk (or even tipsy) that I missed. What I really wanted was that feeling of belonging, of participating in this social ritual.
It’s a feeling shared by others who are “sober-curious,” says Meg Paradise, founder and co-owner of Umbrella Dry Bar, a new nonalcoholic bar in downtown Raleigh. Paradise, who hasn’t had a drink in about two years, says she also found abstaining difficult at first.
“It’s not something where I felt pressured by any one person,” she says. “It was more that I was going into familiar places [with] just that environmental pressure—it’s inherent to the space that you grab a glass, you grab a beer, you grab whatever.”
“Sometimes that interaction can be uncomfortable if your intention is not drinking,” Paradise continues. “I would feel flustered and be like, ‘Whatever, give me a glass of wine.’ It wasn’t really mindful or intentional.”
The purpose of Umbrella Dry Bar is to ease that transition, making it easier for people who don’t want to drink to say no, says Paradise. The bar, which opened in early January on West Martin Street, kicked off with an alcohol-free New Year’s Eve party.
“It was very much a bold statement,” says Paradise of the decision to open the new bar (and new year) with a party. “That, you can do this. We’re all having a sober and also a good experience. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we almost sold out of tickets. We had walk-ins. It was really cool to see that many people enjoying the most alcohol-centric holiday of the year without alcohol.”
A few weeks later, the bar still has a steady trickle of customers early on a Friday night. As with traditional bars, the foot traffic picks up later in the evening, Paradise says. The cozy, dimly lit space attracts people bar-hopping downtown, including those looking for a conventional cocktail lounge.
Once inside the space, though, it’s hard to distinguish it from your run-of-the-mill alcohol establishment. Bottles of nonalcoholic spirits are lined up on shelves behind the bar, the perfect place to chat with the bartender or meet some friends. Across the room, booths offer a lovely haven to have a quiet conversation under low lights.
My drink of choice, the cleverly titled Matcha-Do About Nothing, looks like a typical cocktail and it’s strong enough to sip on. As I savor the earthy, vanilla-forward drink, it’s surprisingly easy to relax into a frank conversation, the kind you have with your friends at two a.m. after most of the party guests have left.
“There’s definitely the placebo effect of just holding something in your hand,” Paradise says. “People walk out, and they’re like, ‘Are you sure there wasn’t something in that? I feel really good.’ Or ‘We had a great conversation.’”
While Umbrella Dry Bar is the first fully nonalcoholic bar to open in Raleigh, “zero-proof cocktails” have been popping up across the Triangle for the last few years.
In Raleigh, for instance, chic cocktail lounge Dram & Draught has several “spirit-free” options, including the Wake Up Call, with cold-brew coffee, walnut bitters, and nonalcoholic versions of Kahlúa and spiced rum. A block or so north, Willard Rooftop Lounge serves a pineapple-ginger mule with pineapple, lime, ginger beer, and candied ginger.
Nationwide, young adults are drinking less, and fewer drink on a regular basis, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. Today, about 62 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 35 say they drink, according to the poll. That’s down from 72 percent in the early 2000s.
Dry January has also grown in popularity, according to The New York Times, which cited data from a 2022 survey by Morning Consult. According to the report, about 19 percent of Americans nationwide participate in Dry January, up from 13 percent in 2021. Sporadic sobriety is even more popular among millennials, with about 27 percent participating.
The once-niche industry of nonalcoholic spirits is also expanding, with “global retail sales of no- and low-alcohol products valued at over $11 billion, up from $8 billion in 2018,” according to The New York Times.
The generic mocktails of the early 2000s, like nonalcoholic mojitos and piña coladas, are being replaced by complex craft drinks that include more than just fruit and soda. Umbrella Dry Bar elevates that experimentation into an art form, using spirit-free alternatives from freshly founded companies like Free Spirits, De Soi, and Phony Negroni.
With drinking so embedded in American culture, Umbrella Dry Bar offers a welcome alternative. Most of the customers at the bar are “crossover clientele,” Paradise says, who sometimes drink and sometimes don’t.
While sobriety may have been limited to people recovering from alcoholism in the past, today, the reasons people choose not to drink are all different. Paradise, for example, first started abstaining from alcohol when she was pregnant with her first child. During those nine months, she still went out to bars with her friends but started to realize that “maybe that wasn’t exactly who I wanted to be,” she says.
Paradise—a devotee to healthy, mindful living—is also concerned with the health implications of drinking, like many others. According to the Gallup poll, young adults are increasingly concerned that moderate drinking is unhealthy: 52 percent held the view in 2023, up from 34 percent in 2018. But reasons for not drinking are as varied as the people making the choice, and it’s not always easy to put into words.
“People are coming for all different reasons and they’re really exploring and taking their own journey—figuring out what feels good for them and what feels right,” Paradise says. “We have people who do identify as sober … and then there’s some people who are like, ‘This isn’t really sitting great with me right now, so I’m going to take a break.’ They don’t really put in parameters, but they’re more mindful or conscious about their consumption.”
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