MOCKTAIL MANIA
By Chris Wadsworth
You’re out for dinner and drinks with friends. Everyone is ordering a cocktail, but you’re not in the mood. Maybe you’re taking medicine. Maybe you had drinks the night before. Or maybe you’re just being more health conscious.
Whatever the reason, it used to be your options were a soda – perhaps a ginger ale – or a non-alcoholic beer or – God forbid – a glass of water. But where’s the fun in that? Just because you aren’t drinking doesn’t mean you shouldn’t join in the revelry. That’s where mocktails – or spirit-free cocktails – come in. You can’t swing a blue cheese stuffed olive without spotting more and more non-alcoholic options on beverage menus.
And the stats show the interest is there. In 2025, a Gallup poll found the percentage of adults who said they drank had fallen to 54% – the lowest point in the 90 years they’ve been asking the question.
Young people are leading the way. A similar survey from Gallup in 2023 found the percentage of those under age 35 who drank had dropped 10 percentage points over the past two decades.
Ashburn Magazine reached out to John Filkins, beverage director for the Clyde’s Restaurant Group, to discuss the trend. The company operates six restaurants around the region, including Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm here in Ashburn.
The menu at Clyde’s features such concoctions as the Tea Time with raspberry hibiscus tea, watermelon-mint, cranberry, lemon and hibiscus ginger beer, and the La Repuesta with Ritual-brand non-alcoholic tequila, grapefruit, lavender and lime.
Filkins shared with us some of his observations on this growing preference for spirit-free cocktails.
BETTER OPTIONS
“The interest in non-alcoholic cocktails isn’t new – we’ve been watching it build for about 15 years. What has changed dramatically in the last five years is the quality and availability of non-alcoholic spirits. Every program I’ve run has had N.A. options, so when we built out the Clyde’s menus, it was a natural inclusion. We formally launched N.A. cocktails across the group in fall 2021 with three dedicated options on every menu, and they’ve been there ever since.”
CREATING THE MENU
“Twice a year, I bring together a group of bartenders from across all six Clyde’s locations to do R&D [research and development] for our seasonal menus – N.A. cocktails are part of that process. It’s genuinely collaborative. The challenge early on was two-fold – limited availability of quality N.A. spirits – and a fundamental technical problem – when you remove alcohol from a spirit, you also remove a significant amount of texture and ‘mouthfeel.’ Alcohol carries flavor and weight in ways that take real creativity to replicate. Our team has gotten much better at solving for that through technique, ingredient layering, and the improved products now on the market.”
GUEST REACTION
“The growth speaks for itself – sales have increased 20-25% every year since we launched. We approach the N.A. menu the same way we approach the full cocktail menu – there’s range and intention. We typically feature two styles – something bright and easy-drinking and something rooted in classic cocktail tradition for the guest who wants that familiar experience without the alcohol. One thing that’s been fun to watch – guests will sometimes ask to add spirits to the lighter, fruit-forward options.”
PASSING FAD OR PERMANENT FIXTURE?
“They’re here for good. The conversation around drinking has shifted. Guests are making more intentional choices about alcohol consumption for all kinds of reasons – health, wellness, medication, work commitments or simply personal preference. Our job isn’t to question that – it’s to make sure every guest at the bar has something worth drinking. A great N.A. cocktail does exactly that. N.A. cocktails should add to our beverage program rather than being an afterthought.”