Drinks with Benefits Is Turning a Night Out Into an ANA Discovery Experience
As with any fast-growing category, ANA beverages have run into a familiar challenge: getting someone not just to try the product, but to understand it well enough to go looking for it again on their own. Amanda Paul-Garnier, General Manager, Alcohol-Free Drinks at The Daily Pour, told me that gap between tasting and actually understanding is exactly what her team set out to close.
Their answer was Drinks with Benefits, a live tasting and wellness experience The Daily Pour built to give people a real, in-person way into the ANA category. Not a booth. Not a product demo. A full night of trying, tasting, and learning, with ANA beverages built into nearly every part of it.
Built to Leave People With the Best Possible Impression
Paul-Garnier told me the goal from the start was for people to walk away with the best possible impression of the ANA world. That’s a specific, high bar, not just a good time, not just a decent sample, but the best impression someone could form of the category in a single night. Everything else about the event follows from that goal.
It shows up in the level of detail. There’s a Wine Salon featuring Wine Enthusiast-recognized bottles, so a guest’s first real point of comparison for NA wine is a bottle experts have already vouched for. There’s a hands-on mixology lab, where guests build cocktails with ANA spirits themselves rather than just tasting one someone else made. There’s a food pairing area, where The Daily Pour partners with plant-forward restaurants like abcV and The Butcher’s Daughter, so ANA beverages get served alongside serious cooking instead of standing alone. There’s a dance floor downstairs, too, one Paul-Garnier calls a sober rave, so the impression extends past what’s in the glass to what a full night out can feel like without alcohol in it.
“It’s not just a tasting festival,” Paul-Garnier said when I asked her what people actually experience there. Every part of the night is working toward the same impression, not competing for attention against it.
The Same Standard Extends to the Awards
The same standard shows up in how The Daily Pour runs the Zero Proof Choice Awards, a blind-judged competition that runs alongside the festival. Judging panels include bartenders, distributors, store owners, and category specialists, and entries are tasted blind before judges discuss each product to settle on a final score. Paul-Garnier described it as building something closer to what Wine Spectator does for wine, a trusted, expert-vetted answer to what’s actually good in a category still short on trusted answers.
That trust doesn’t stay in the judging room. A double gold winner gets featured at Drinks with Benefits itself, so the same panel that decided which products earned recognition also shapes what guests taste at the festival.
What This Adds Up to for Brands
Paul-Garnier sees Drinks with Benefits as one part of a broader set of programs built for ANA brands. There’s the Zero Proof Choice Awards, for brands that want expert feedback and recognition. There’s the festival itself, for brands that want direct contact with buyers and consumers. And there’s a Summit, for brands looking to connect with the wider industry. Each one serves a brand at a different point in its own timeline.
She also pointed to something that keeps coming up when brands talk to her about why they show up: the chance to meet other brands in the room. Everyone’s at a different stage, she said, but there’s real value in simply hearing how someone else further along handled the same problem.
What Still Needs Building
Paul-Garnier has run Drinks with Benefits long enough now to watch attitudes shift year over year, and she’s honest that the work isn’t finished. There’s still a long way to go, she told me. The audience she thinks about most isn’t the person already curious about ANA beverages. It’s the much larger group who hasn’t thought about the category at all, and who would likely be interested if the message reached them the right way.
That’s the real argument Drinks with Benefits makes for the category. Discovery doesn’t happen by accident, and neither does a category that people trust enough to buy into on their own. Both take building, one night, one guest, one impression at a time.
Marcos Salazar
Marcos Salazar is the CEO of the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
The ANA Insider
News, Insights, Events, & Jobs for the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverages Industry
Join our community of over 10,000 industry professionals receiving the exclusive newsletter from the Adult Non-Alcoholic Association (ANBA).
Each newsletter delivers:
- Insights data in the ANA beverage landscape
- A round up the most important news and headlines
- Breaking news from ANBA members and new product launches
- Business webinars, industry events, and jobs at leading ANA companies