There are so many reasons why restaurants are resisting adding a non-alcohol menu to their offerings. One, they don't know where to find the product. Two, they are uncomfortable with the conversation around the non-alcoholic movement. Three, they think it's expensive and it won't sell. And four, they don't understand the impact it could have on their team, restaurant environment or bottom line. Well, eather Ransom and I are here today to discuss all of these challenges and give you a fresh perspective on why NOLO is a movement that is here to stay and is not just a new menu trend. We're also going to provide you with the resources you need to kick off your own non-alcohol menu. Heather Ranson is a seasoned expert with three decades of experience in restaurant and business consulting. She's dedicated to helping the industry navigate the no-low, no-and-low alcohol movement. Serving in many areas of hospitality leadership, she aims to broaden adoption and create a more inclusive environment for the no-low seekers. Her lifelong passion for the industry drives her dedication to the hospitality sector. In today's episode, we're going to cover such topics as who is consuming non-alcoholic drinks and and hint, it's not just Gen Z. How Zero Proof Go? Heather's company is closing the gap of education and accessibility of these products to both bars and restaurants, why it's important for restaurants to get on board with this movement as competition is mounting in the non-alcoholic bar space, and how to prepare your staff for sober October, dry January, dry July and beyond.
Christin Marvin:Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I am your host, Christin Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about, leadership, lessons you want to learn and any feedback that you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting.
Christin Marvin:Heather, thank you so much for being here today. How are you Doing? Great, Christin. Thanks for having me Absolutely so excited to geek out today around one of you and I's favorite topics the no-low space, the non-alc space. You've got a lot going on. You're making a huge impact. So many wonderful opportunities to educate the audience today and talk about the great work that you're doing around Zero Proof Go. So let's start with your passion around NOLO. What is NOLO? What does NOLO mean to you? Where's this passion coming from? Around this?
Heather Ransome:Sure, well, nolo refers to non-alcoholic or low alcohol beverage, programming, essentially, and products. We are, as a community, a little bit all over the place on what we call it. You may say mocktails, you may say NA, you may say zero proof. Zero proof, the truth is, is no low, I've come to find, is the best way to kind of talk about the, the category, or categories, in a way that encompasses everything. It's actually a term they use in Europe and I find it really does make sense, because there's a difference between zero proof and non-alcohol, believe it or not.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, absolutely. And where did this passion come from for you?
Heather Ransome:Well, I've been in the restaurant world my whole life. So I was drawn to the industry at a young age, kind of was lured away from my business degree. I was going to be a French translator and I was going to be an art major and I was working in restaurants, obviously because I loved it and I just got so enthusiastic about that career path as a way to kind of throw a party every day as your job. So I've been in the restaurant business for a really long time. I just sold my bar and music venue and liquor store after 20 years. I've been a consultant all my life. I think I started doing inventory control when I was in my 20s.
Heather Ransome:So I've always dedicated my energy to hospitality because I really believe that it is the greatest job and industry in the world and everyone needs to eat and industry in the world and everyone needs to eat right, everyone needs to eat and drink. So I either have been in directly operations. But it was easy for me early on to see that restaurant owners don't necessarily know how to run their business as a business and I kind of dove into the business side of hospitality and then vowed to support restaurant owners in their efforts to throw a party every day by teaching them how not to lose their restaurants or their mind or their marriage or their homes or whatever. Because we're drawn to the industry. Most people are drawn to the industry, are creative people, people, people. And a lot of people will come to the business side later three to five years in, typically. So I was like, okay, if I'm not gonna be in ops, let me go and support them in that way.
Heather Ransome:So I've always been in hospitality and I used to make beer for a living. So liquor and beer and wine I was gonna be a sommelier at one point. How it is when we get in it like you want every corner, and that's still is happening today. It's one of those great professions where you'll never know all of it. A chef friend of mine said that the other day, like I'm still learning. He's been cooking, you know chefing for 50 years. There's always something, and that's just the entire industry, and I equate it to like the fashion industry too. Like it moves and trends and there's always something going on which is great for all of us that are attracted to it, because we're all ADHD, right.
Christin Marvin:Shiny object syndrome. Yeah, absolutely so. What made you take the leap from operations selling the business around the liquor store, your bar and the entertainment venue and venue and start Zero Proof Go?
Heather Ransome:So, like any trends, right, I started I had my own relationship with alcohol that I considered unhealthy.
Heather Ransome:I don't call myself sober because my birthday is 420 and I celebrate sometimes, um, but uh, I really felt like, um, there was an opportunity, uh for this growing market and for hospitality to embrace it, and I see there's a lot of disconnects with that right now, um, so I came into kind of spackle over some of what was happening from a hospitality side. There's plenty of people in our space, the NOLO space, doing other things or doing products. Uh, there's a lot of product development because it's sort of a new space. There's, you know, the sober side of things, which is a whole other community and I'm not really here to serve those particular markets specifically. I really want to do what I've always been doing and empower my hospitality professionals because the trends it's not a trend, it's not a fad, it's an eventuality, for a whole host of reasons that transcend just oh, it's the new gluten-free. There's a lot of things that are happening in our environment globally that is making NOLO more popular.
Christin Marvin:Yeah and Heather, sorry to interrupt you, but I'd love to dig into that a little bit. You are so close to really studying this and watching what's happening from a global perspective. Would you speak to some of those movements that you're seeing?
Heather Ransome:Sure, I think that the first one is generational. So that seems to transcend all of the other things that we talk about from an American perspective. Generationally speaking, the world has seen a lot of this adoption of recreational marijuana. They've seen just healthfulness, you know, mindfulness, and are the youth and I say youth because I'm a Gen Xer, but the Gen Z and people below that, like we did a good job by kind of saying like, don't do what we've done, right, you know, it's not really healthy for you in, you know, or in moderation, please do in moderation.
Heather Ransome:So, generationally speaking, the younger kids are coming up with the option of marijuana, which has less, at least reported health problems. There's some, and pardon the trigger, but there's some. You know the things around SA. There's things about, you know, duis, accidents, deaths, you know, and then watching their parents die or grandparents, you know, have major health issues because of their overconsumption or overuse or unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
Heather Ransome:Now, the other thing, that's sort of a rumor, but we've seen other countries start to pull back, like government agencies say there's not, it's not healthy for you. So not only do we have this sort of cultural change because we had these options and there's just been a shift from that perspective. But some of the agencies are catching up with some of the research that's calling it. You know, in UK I believe they said it's a class one carcinogen. The FDA is rumored by that in 2025 in America that they're going to declare any amount of alcohol bad for you.
Heather Ransome:So my thought is yes, I think it's really important for the end consumer to make those decisions for themselves. I'm not that person. I'm like you do you, your body, your choice, whatever that is. But my worry for the hospitality industry is that they are resistant to adoption, which is slowing the process, and they're leaving a lot of money on the table and a lot of the future clientele that they're looking for of these younger generations they may lose if they don't start to adopt program and get themselves kind of heads around it.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, and I'm hearing too it sounds like from what I'm hearing from from clients and others in the industry is that dry January is is just expanding now to many, many more months, right, and that there are not just Gen Z people coming in and dining in restaurants, but the current, the current clientele of these restaurants are starting their meal. You know, I've heard 80, up to 80 to 90% of people are coming in and starting their meal with a non-alcoholic cocktail or wine or beer and then ordering their alcohol parent to pair with their meal, like they always have. So I think there's just more consciousness around. Well, I mean, obviously, getting older and drinking the same amount hurts a lot more than it used to, right? You just can't, you can't keep doing that if you want to be productive and live a healthy lifestyle. So I feel like it's starting to like Gen Z. I feel like it's kind of leading the charge and where everybody else is kind of slowly catching on.
Heather Ransome:I think it's kind of a little bit of a sandwich, if you will, because there is just a. The majority of this segment that we're seeing, that's kind of like the ex-wine mommy drinker. Right is the 45 and older female kind of demographic and they're not necessarily quitting but they are being more mindful. Mindful drinking is a term that we use very, very much so in this industry, because that is a very big segment and they consider that a flex drinker is what you're referring to and the reports are about 70% or more of the market is actually a flex drinker, which is why we don't call ourselves sober, for example, like we're just trying to open up the ideas and feelings about Nolo for everybody in the space, because it's a spectrum. But the eventuality is there's the kind of like this you know sun setting of the everyday drinker, you know I'm going to pound a bunch of beers kind of thing, happy hour kind of vibe, and then this new Gen Z, so it's all sort of flowing into that direction. Is it going to happen overnight? No, and partly, in my belief, is that the reason that the movement is taking as long as it is is because hospitality is kind of gatekeeping it. That's harsh to say, but that is what I've seen, because we are very early adopters to things on trend. Let me tell you something if I go to a place, I definitely see Brussels sprouts and mac and cheese and every menu right. Gluten free was one of these things that really kind of spurred me to say why is this different, why is this category so much different and why is there so much resistance? Because, as a restaurant consultant, how many times have I been in a situation where a guy said, oh, I'm not putting gluten-free on the menu. Next, you know, cauliflower pieces is, but you know, um, vegetarianism, veganism, you know all of this stuff was eventually adopted with less resistance. Now, I believe that part of the reason that is is because the audience, the no low seeker, does not advocate for themselves. They don't because it's a very uncomfortable conversation to have in an unfriendly I say zero proof, not friendly hospitality venue. And that is because there's other people.
Heather Ransome:You know you and I have been in this business for a long time. We know because we had our shift drink at eight o'clock at night and then by two o'clock in the morning we're still drinking, and then we were playing through the next morning Like. So you know, there is that sort of lifestyle that uh has been incorporated in the business and it's almost like they feel like they can't be both things, um, or they're confronted with maybe their own issues about uh, their relationship with alcohol, um, so that cultural kind of thing thing. And you know, you and I are big fans of Anthony Bourdain.
Heather Ransome:Bourdain started calling attention to the unhealthy lifestyle of the restaurant business back in the day of Kitchen Confidential and to me the no-lo movement is just still a remnant of that kind of old school culture now. But I'm seeing, as I'm still out there consulting that the new generation isn't like that. The younger new worker, the new restaurant server, runner, buster, host or whatever. They're not doing the same things that we did, you know, and we, you know, we got chops. We were like you kidding me I would do a triple I mean a triple from Saturday to Sunday and just be drinking the whole time. So I think it's all changing and I just want to be able to prepare hospitality and help them navigate it, because it's not a playbook that we've had before, it's a real, real cultural change in our space.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, I definitely relate to that. I think when we stopped drinking, it was really uncomfortable for us to go out to eat at some of our favorite restaurants, knowing that we were going to sit down and automatically be greeted with a glass of rosé and a shot of tequila, and we had to look at the menus before we went out and say, okay, what do they have available? Do we feel comfortable going there? Because we were still trying to figure out how to have that conversation with ourselves, with people that we knew at the restaurant and people we were dining with, we would find something we wanted to drink. Na, beer was everywhere, so we're not even beer drinkers, but that was what we went towards. And we'd go to a restaurant early, we'd order a beer, we'd ask them to put it in a pine glass, so it didn't look like anything different than beer. Right, and that was one way that we kind of helped calm our nerves and stress around having conversations around it. Hey there, podcast friends, I hope you're enjoying these impactful conversations and leadership insights I'm bringing you each week.
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Christin Marvin:It's interesting that you say you know that you think restaurateurs are the gatekeepers. And what I'm seeing is that restaurateurs, if they have anything on the menu, I mean God, it's just a club soda and lime in so many places, which is just so infuriating, or something sugary and shitty. I see if restaurants have something on their menu, it's one thing, and it's usually a real shitty NA beer. I don't think that restaurateurs are thinking about the NA space yet as a category. I think they're thinking about it as one. If I've got one offering on the menu, I'm good, I'm catering, I can call myself inclusive. There's so much opportunity here to cater to the beer drinkers, to cater to the wine drinkers, to cater to the beer drinkers, to cater to the wine drinkers, to cater to the cocktail drinkers. What do you think it's going to take for people to get past that gatekeeper mentality?
Heather Ransome:Well, what we're doing right now awareness, putting it on their radar. If they're not doing it today, they're going to do it by demand. We talked about dry January, but I didn't know this. This is actually called dry July. That was news to me. So now we've got dry January, dry July and then we have a sober October month and it's like, okay, well, we're going to start running out of months here soon.
Heather Ransome:So during those months, as these things get more popular and there's more demand, you have a choice as a restaurant owner to not participate and essentially, your people won't come. Now I want to just interview you for a minute, because I did put together an advisory council and I don't think that restaurant owners and I'm hoping they have their ears on when we talk about this understand the discomfort that their guests are experiencing around this. By asking or looking, doing what you're saying, I am already going through my own personal challenge. I come there to have a hospitality experience because I want to go out and have a personal challenge. I come there to have a hospitality experience because I want to go out and have a good time. I want to go out and I want to spend money.
Heather Ransome:You're essentially, as a restaurant owner not giving me the opportunity to A have a good experience, because if I spend 15 minutes of my time feeling just a lack of comfort, that's not putting me in a party mood, right. That may make my shorten my experience or the enjoyable part of my experience. Now let's forget that you already had to wait 45 minutes because you were double booked and the hostess didn't clean the table and everything else. So that's one of these sort of like non tangible things you have to think goes into the full overall guest experience. And then then you, if you do decide to advocate for yourself, what is your conversation? I know you're interviewing me, but what is your conversation with the server? What do you say when you don't see something on the menu?
Christin Marvin:Or do you?
Heather Ransome:say anything.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, well, I, because I'm so passionate about this and I'm really trying to push demand every single place I go. I know that some usually restaurants they've got something behind the bar. It's not on the menu, which is a huge miss, but it's got something behind the bar. And so I'm just starting a conversation with the server what do you have in terms of non-alcoholic offerings? And say, well, we have iced tea or we have lemonade or we have club soda. I'm like, what else Can you do? An NA mocktail. And usually people will try to throw something together. So I appreciate that, although it's usually pretty low quality stuff, right, because it is just a mashup of whatever they've got back there.
Christin Marvin:But I'm hoping that when I leave that there is some sort of continued conversation between that server and bartender of why don't we have X? Or the bartender and the beverage manager saying, hey, I got a call for this today and we didn't have it. And I will be specific of do you have any non-alcoholic beer? Do you have any non-alcoholic wine? Because, again, I want to continue that conversation and if I have an opportunity to talk to the manager, they come over. I'm going to say, hey, have you guys looked at any options and putting something on your menu. I would love to drop another six to eight dollars on top of this check average, if not twice that, so that I can have a nice cocktail with my lunch or with my dinner. Have you guys thought about this? And again, most people are like, oh, you know, it's not something that we're into, or no, we haven't, we haven't thought about it. Or yes, we are looking into it, we're just trying to find the right options.
Heather Ransome:Well, that's really good to hear and you are a unicorn. But I think that those of us that come in the hospitality space, we just want to educate, because we are educators, you know, as consultants, and we hope that that gets to leadership. But that doesn't always happen and there's some really horrible stories about that because they, you know, depending on the type of concept, right, if you're at a dive bar, you're in trouble. If you're in a very, very high end place, you could be in trouble because you might be saying the same kind of thing to a craft cocktail bartender as you're saying to a chef can you not make anything on the menu? And I want you to take the fettuccine from over here and I want the sauce from this, and I have an allergy to nine things on your menu.
Heather Ransome:Then the experience. Now, that's if you advocate for yourself, but most people don't, because of the topic, they are often infantilized. That's been my experience, where I'm like, oh, you're a little non-drinker, you little, you know. That's why they call things virgin and mock. It's a little laughable to them that I don't drink, right, which infuriates me, or they, you know, they try to be accommodating, but you know, I don't want to go. And now now back to your situation. You looked on the menu. You spent 15 minutes trying to figure out if you could. You know if there was anything. Now you have to have a four-minute conversation educating a server now the server has to go to the bartender and that that talk about table turns. I'm in the business of making money. We're not turning tables with that situation. Now, if they do, because you you know I'm an inventory person if they do whip something up for me, that's not being captured in the point of sale properly and probably not being charged for.
Heather Ransome:So now my inventory numbers are all messed up. Forget it. I count sugar packets. That pisses me off, but all it takes is a little bit of energy and investment to do it even a little bit. Now I know you said well, some people are, you know, have a non-alcoholic beer. Even when I see places that have non-alcoholic beer, it's not sitting on the display of their beer shelf. I still have to ask. And then they say and it's funny because it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy like, oh, we don't really sell that much, but we stopped carrying it. I was like because there's nowhere on your menu or on display that anybody would know it was an option. You are not really being hospitable in this environment and you have to kind of come to terms with that.
Heather Ransome:So that's kind of where we are in the movement. Is this convincing that we're doing which is? It takes a long time, right? Like whenever you're trying to change minds, it takes a long time and a lot of different storytelling, a lot of storytelling to get it across and to make it make sense. At the end of the day, no matter how you feel culturally about it, you are losing money as a restaurant owner right now. And to your point, $68 for a cocktail, I will pay $20 if I different you're. That's a differentiator for you in some markets. Yeah, now in New York every restaurant does it because they also have a demographic that there's, you know, multiple ethnicities, different religious backgrounds. So this kind of cocktail programming already made sense in an environment that's very, you know, kind of, you know, coastal elitist if you will. But even in Philadelphia we're not really great, you know, I'm in between Philadelphia and New York, not really great ambassadors for it.
Heather Ransome:Now I worry about the money part because if we look at the margins that are shrinking like ridiculous, we're having shrinkflation in the commercial food space. I don't know if you've talked about this with any of your clients now or your audience, but the shrinkflation we're seeing in supermarkets is actually happening real time. Like we need to have scales on our loading docks right now to make sure our 40 pound wings are actually 40 and not 35. That's how crazy it is right now. So we're losing money all over the place. We're, you know credit card processing rate everything's insane right now. Minimum wages are going up in certain states for labor. You know, everything's ridiculous.
Heather Ransome:It makes no sense to me why you would not put a NOLO program in which is huge margins, yeah, huge margins, yeah. Now there's two kind of camps of that, right. So there's all these NOLO products that are coming out. There's replicas or alternatives, like gin and tequilas. There's other products that are ready to drinks, you know. So some of those are still sort of costly, so their margins are.
Heather Ransome:But you can whip up anything in your restaurant that already with stuff you have laying around and recycle. I am going to talk uh, hopefully do a podcast this woman called Hempress Hempress cocktails and we were talking last week. She is a zero waste person. So what she's doing to really squeeze pennies, talk about 100% profit, right. Whatever, she's actually going into the kitchen and when they make a blueberry puree for their cheesecake, they throw out that juice typically. So she's now taking she's like they've got mint stems. She's repurposing all this to make a mocktail program. That's just putting money on the bottom line and it's free money and people will pay 10, 15, depending where you are. You know, throw a little salt rim on that. You know, do a smoke bubble? I don't know I'll pay for it because I can't get even a basic drink anywhere. I don't get charged for my tonic orders when I drink out. They just don't charge me. So not only are you not making money on me, but you're losing money on me.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, that's not how. We went out the other day and got charged $4 for a club soda and we just looked at each other and we said remember the days where this was just water and you didn't have to pay for it. So talk, there's so much opportunity here.
Heather Ransome:I mean gosh, we could just go down so many different rabbit holes. Let's talk about what Zero Proof Go is doing and how you're working to close that gap. So Zero Proof Go, sort of on the surface, is a directory website and a content website we're trying to educate through, you know, writing articles about dry travel product features, five places in Milwaukee that are already doing it and celebrate those are already doing it, as a way to kind of show people, because I think that's another thing. People don't think it's a thing yet because in the media there was a lot of energy around it, I would say up until this past dry January, and I started working on this concept three years ago, hoping to release and start Zero Proof Go website to dry January's ago. But truth was it's really slow and so we are doing that. So if you go to Zero Proof Go, that's where you're gonna find, you're gonna find a directory service. So if you are a restaurant that has been inclusive with their programming, has dedicated real estate on your menu, you have to actually have put energy into it. You can be listed on our site, which is really, really important right now because people are looking for you, people are looking for you they. If you are a restaurant that is doing this, you've got to let people know. A lot of people are doing it but they're not marketing around it because they're a little confused on how to do that and we have some answers for that. So we're just getting them on a directory.
Heather Ransome:And then the other thing we do is events. We are the inventors of, or the first documented non-alcoholic bar crawl. We did that in dry January this year and we did another one in February. We did five cities and we're going to expand on that in October. But that's just another thing to like just connect the people who are looking for you. It's so weird because they're not vegan, saying I want vegan and they're just kind of waiting for you to do it. Build it if you will, and they will come. That's exactly where we are right now. So it was kind of just there to kind of get people connected to restaurants that had both really, because there's another, there's a couple other sites out there that do just zero proof bars, because that's a whole nother segment that's popping up which my restaurant people need to watch for because they're and they're real competitors now, competitors now. So that's kind of what the website is.
Heather Ransome:But the truth is it was a way for me to kind of shine a light on people who are doing it, show who is, add people to connect them, connect the products to the venues, because that's another challenge that we're facing In my restaurant people's defense. The normal channels for getting no local products don't exist. So I'm like, how do I make sure people have a place to go to find stuff and understand? Because when I quit drinking, I, as a hospitality professional, I lobby in the National Restaurant Association every year in DC. I'm in leadership in the Pennsylvania Restaurant Lodging Association. I am a nerd for this and if I can't find it then it's really hard. It's a needle in a haystack. So that's what the website's about. But we also then realized that we need to do consulting, no-transcript packs we've done and sample menus, you know, and really just a phase one that we would typically charge a lot of money for but we're giving away for free for certain segments. You're listeners, kristen, you're allowed.
Christin Marvin:Well and you had mentioned that you've got stickers that you provide to the restaurant so they can put it right on the window and anybody that's coming in already knows, before they step foot in the door, that there's something for them there.
Heather Ransome:Yeah, so they get a zero-proof go. It's this logo decal, vinyl decal, that can go on their windows so when people are walking by they know it's a friendly environment for them. So, yeah, I mean we're, we're, we're keep re shifting with this kind of energy and where we need to be. But we feel like now we're creating a slack community for all the stakeholders, including venues, to start having conversations as a free community, the stakeholders, including venues, to start having conversations as a free community. So now, because I tried to make a toolkit that everybody could use, here's your five menu items.
Heather Ransome:But the truth is and you know as a consultant yourself, it depends on your concept, it depends on your demographic, it depends on your procurement issues, because in different markets Depends on your procurement issues, because in different markets getting product is different. So we have a way to kind of start easy. You know, make a couple simple syrups. You know, put, make a menu, explain to your staff staff training, like how to just be hospitable to people. So some of those things are in the toolkit and then the ongoing conversation will happen.
Christin Marvin:The Slack channel, where it can be really drilled down and customized to what's going on, you can talk to other people who are doing're working on, you know, closing that gap of accessibility to the restaurants, first and foremost, so that they can close the gap of accessibility to their staff and to their guests, because that's really what it's going to take, right on top of the awareness and the knowledge and the supply chain issues. I mean there's a lot of things to unpack, there's a lot of work to be done for sure. So, again, kudos to you for recognizing all this and working on it so hard and putting this program together. How can people get involved from a nationwide perspective if they're really passionate about this concept?
Heather Ransome:Well, I would say, join the Slack community. We'll drop some links in there that they can connect with me. They have to apply because I just I don't want to make it. I want to make sure there's value for all the people that are participating and just really call me, and if you're interested in doing it, sometimes you just need somebody to bounce something off of. So myself and my partner, my consulting partner, Krista Vigilante, I've got a stable of people that can help you.
Heather Ransome:If you want to be connected to product, if you want an education, if you want recipes, I have book authors. You know that that's the things like. I'm always been my whole life Heather. I got a guy ransom for the restaurant industry and there's no. Now I'm Heather. I got a guy for anything, or gal or they in the in the NOLO space, just to help people navigate it and do whatever they can. You know, this is the thing. If you it's a lot to unpack for you personally, professionally, whatever Do just a little bit, Just get educated, get involved. Do just a little bit, just get educated, get involved.
Heather Ransome:I would say, if you are a restaurant that already is doing it or you're interested in doing it and you want to, I can give you a menu or we can do something to get you on board and then I can add you to our bar crawl in October. So every bar that has a program can be listed on this. Now, if you don't mind me, just kind of talking. This is another one of the challenges that our hospitality friends are having is that, even if they are doing it, how do you market it? That is a true challenge, because they just don't know what to say.
Heather Ransome:So I created the Bar Crawl as an event to market it. So it's kind of like your coming out party that you're not like hey, I've got mocktails, because you don't know how to do it yet. Do it around an event, and we do it typically on a non-busy day to introduce people in the market to you, and that's all you need is kind of like that introduction to your guests. So that's happening. So, yeah, I would just say reach out to me and I have a team. I have a team of people that can help and we'll even design your menus for you, like, if you have.
Heather Ransome:This is how passionate we are. This is not a business as much as a mission and a calling. So we're really here to help. We all want it and a lot of the people we've go-getters in different markets too which are sort of the local face of Zero Proof Go that will come and they'll build a bar crawl for you. They'll come and do tasting of products for you if you want. We can do all kinds of cool stuff and we just say come with an open mind and a lot of it's free.
Christin Marvin:Nice what cities are you already in?
Heather Ransome:So our go-getter team. We have a Connecticut, philadelphia, new Jersey just onboarded. Milwaukee, virginia, uh, another uh place in Pennsylvania and Florida, like in the Broward County area, um, and we're looking for more every day. The go-getters program is really designed to take people who are feeling the angst and like I got to do something about this and give them something to do and also staff the products people.
Heather Ransome:So the products when we were talking about the channel of procurement supply chain is a little weird because the big alcohol companies haven't necessarily decided to come on board yet, for obvious reasons.
Heather Ransome:So there's a lot of small producers coming out and so they don't have a sales team, they don't have a lot of marketing dollars. So we're trying to help them kind of connect with our hospitality professionals and we will use our go getters program to be kind of that person for them temporarily. So the product team kind of foots the bill, but they'll come in to do a tasting and they ship the product and all that good stuff, like your Heineken girls but Heineken zero. So that is expanding and we get applications every day. But you really have to kind of fit a certain kind of model which it really has to align with something you're already doing in the space. So either you're a bartender or you own a shop or you are a brand ambassador for someone. That's kind of what we're looking for for the Zero Proof Go-Getters life coach, sobriety coaches, things like that is kind of what we try to staff it with.
Christin Marvin:That we can trust is going to deliver the message of what we're trying to do yeah, and you've got an exciting opportunity coming up to engage with people that are participating in NOLO and with Zero Proof Go.
Heather Ransome:I'm so excited about this so nationwide, we're doing by state.
Heather Ransome:We're introducing the Zero Proof Go Awards, another opportunity to market what you're doing, because you can nominate yourself your venue for doing it.
Heather Ransome:And so now you're going to connect with the people who are looking for you through the Zero Proof Go Awards. So it's going to be a public, you know, sort of people's choice award, people nominated, then we open the nominations in August, in September we do the voting and then in October every nominated bar, plus the bars we had, will be on our Zero Proof Go self-serve bar crawl list. So if we don't have a go-getter leading an actual crawl, it doesn't matter, you can still list your bar and then we're going to help you market because there are people are going to want to go. Now, if you win zero proof go award in your market for best venue, you know, whatever, then we'll have a party at your place as either the beginning of the crawl, if it's organized, or the end of the crawl. So again, connecting the brands, that. So a lot of freebies, a lot of contests and really a way to market and just tell people you're doing it.
Christin Marvin:I love it.
Heather Ransome:So how do people learn more about the awards and what's the deadline for applying? So we will give you a link as part of this podcast or you can go to zeroproofgocom, which is the website, and it'll be all over there and you'll be able to enter your nominations there in August, and that will run from August I think it's August 15th to the end of August and then we start the voting. So we have a little time to like. Take the nominations, flip it into a voting software, which I have a development team in India working on for me, and the winners will be announced at the beginning of October, along with the crawl.
Christin Marvin:Awesome For any restaurants that are listening right now. Maybe they don't have the bandwidth to kind of go all in with the program at this point, but they're curious about Sober October and they want to get prepared for that. What would you recommend that they do?
Heather Ransome:What would you recommend that they do? I would suggest number one talking to your staff today and saying hi, I just want to know if you have had anyone ask, because if you don't know then you're not going to want to do anything with us. So for October I don't think it's being reported up Then I would also educate the staff on. If you do hear it, please let me know. We're trying to understand demand and then decide on some sort of event that you can do in sober October. We know when dry January came around. I want to go back to your experience going out. So you're brave, right, a lot of us are brave. We'll go out and we will advocate for ourselves in a restaurant environment and say we want me three years to get there.
Christin Marvin:Didn't happen for years.
Heather Ransome:Yeah, the advisory council that I put together and I got people that were all stages of drinking people who never drank, people who drank because they didn't like it, uh, people who didn't drink because of religious reasons, or their spouse was a drinker, or they were in the program for a long time and all of them say that. All of them said that they just don't go out, and that really bothered me. So that's why it's important to really get an understanding of what the experience is for non-drinker or no low seeker in your environment right now and try to make some adjustments on what that culture is going to look like in the future and educate your staff. That's what I would do today. Before you even decide to put something on, if you do have a non-alcoholic beer, celebrate it, put it out on display, put it on your menu and maybe just make like two or three cocktails. Contact me, I'll give you the toolkit and you can and, and you know, put a time to talk with me and just do something. You know, because if you don't do anything, you're not even going to know, because people aren't even coming to your restaurant. You're just going to be dead. Right, if you know, and it's going to continue as well.
Heather Ransome:Now, maybe Sober October is not a great kind of example of that, but I bet you, if we talk about people how their dry January went this past year, it was brutal, brutal. There was a major beer sales were down, nationwide Sales were down, and the people I talked to be like I'm just not going out because I don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation and I don't want to go to a place that does not create an inclusivity for me, that they're not being hospitable. So, even if you don't hear from your staff, that is happening, and I'm not just saying that because it's me I've got. So I'm on all these forums, on Facebook and everything, and this is constant. These people are like I can't find what I need. If you don't do it, your neighbor's going to do it. If your neighbor doesn't do it, a zero bar is going to pop up soon and then you're going to lose these people forever.
Christin Marvin:And I agree with you, they weren't going out to dine. But when I talked to non-alcoholic producers they said dry January was 10 times better than it's ever been before. Direct to consumer online Yep.
Heather Ransome:So they're finding it. Yeah Well, that's the other thing. That's crazy If you talked about your staff the staff. As a bartender, my whole life and I was a craft brewer, so I've already been down this road once Craft beer, remember, in the beginning I don't know how old you are, but when we were banging on doors I was a female brewer, so I was able to get my beer on draft, which was really really difficult back then, because you're like, no one's going to want to drink this garbage with smells like skunk and why is it cloudy.
Heather Ransome:And you know it's $80 a keg. I'm getting rolling rock for 40. So we already been through this, you know, and and um, bartenders that leaned into craft beer, and and um, bartenders that leaned into craft beer, they became specialists. There's a whole opportunity for that now. Uh, for bartenders. If I was going to be a career differentiator, that's what I would. I would be doing with my time, and there's a lot of fun stuff with, like adaptogens. Um, there's things that are not sober necessarily but they're alcohol free. You know there's all kinds of interesting things CBD, thc, kava, all this stuff. So like there's not a lot of people are doing that.
Heather Ransome:I would dive in if you're a bartender and just get educated, join their Slack community and learn some stuff and you can probably get more per hour any industry.
Christin Marvin:If you've got people coming in after a workout, they want something healthy and hydrating and functional, right, I'm a big proponent now of the functional category, if you like, with things with adaptogens and things like that I'm always looking for as many. I've put so much bad shit in my body over the last 43 years. I'm trying to flip that script now and just be as healthy as I can. But I also think I think this is a beautiful program for, for any concept. But I mean coffee shops, um, qsr, full service. I mean I think about, like back in my fine dining days when we'd go dine and have 12 courses or 20 courses I it was. We were hammered at the end because we were doing wine pairings right, like if you could just incorporate in a couple different NAs here or start there and then ease your guests in. I mean just to enhance the experience so that they actually remember every single course.
Christin Marvin:I just think there's massive opportunity everywhere, and again, restaurants have an opportunity to customize this and do it to exactly what fits their brand and their clientele. And so again, I just think, I think this is awesome. I love, I love this trend, I love the work that you're doing behind it and how passionate you are. Um, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and your background and just cannot wait to. Obviously, we're connected now. I'm on Slack, so everybody please jump on there too. This is a wonderful community of people and just can't wait to continue to follow the journey and see how we can help spread the message.
Heather Ransome:Thank you, and I do appreciate you spreading the message. That is exactly what we need. We need to shout it from the rooftops and empower our hospitality professionals, and an extra $2,000 a month isn't going to hurt either.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, absolutely Awesome. All right, everybody. Thank you so much again, heather, for being here today. This episode is going to drop right in August, so everybody will know about the awards. Please go visit ZeroProofGocom and check out what Heather's doing and be a part of her community that's going to do it for us this week. Please be sure to share this podcast with anyone you know in the restaurant industry and thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week.