Listening to publicans’ views on alcohol-free drinks

Alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks are more popular than ever, but what do the people running pubs think about them? 

We commissioned Opinion Research Services to conduct in-depth interviews with eleven Welsh publicans and bar managers to give us a better understanding of the potential role alcohol-free drinks can play in pubs. The aim of this kind of qualitative research with a small sample was not to get big numbers we can crunch and extrapolate percentages from but to properly understand how people are thinking, feeling, and behaving. What the interviewees told us was genuinely interesting, and not quite what we expected.