UK’s alcohol-free beer Lucky Saint says it is not reliant on teetotallers

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The founder of Lucky Saint said that the UK’s largest dedicated alcohol- free beer brand was not reliant on drinkers going teetotal to drive sales as the company pushes to make its brew available on draught at more pubs.

The London-based group is instead benefiting from a broader trend of consumers adopting healthier diets in which they drink traditional beer as well as low-alcohol or alcohol-free versions, said Luke Boase, who worked as an equity analyst before founding Lucky Saint in 2018. 

“There is definitely a big sober movement but moderation is still a much bigger driver of the category,” said Boase, adding that more than 80 per cent of people buying low- or no-alcohol drinks also enjoy standard beer.

The world’s biggest brewers have already sought to capitalise on the trend, with Heineken, Budweiser and Guinness among the brands to have launched low-alcohol or alcohol-free versions in recent years.

“You’ve got consumers moderating across all categories, whether that’s meat consumption, alcohol or sugar,” said Boase. 

Lucky Saints ranks as the fourth most-popular brand in the category in the UK, trailing Heineken, which dominates with its Heineken 0.0, and Asahi, whose Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0 was launched last year and is now the second-biggest, according to Nielsen consumer data.

The volume of alcohol-free or low-alcohol beers consumed in the 10 biggest markets grew 5 per cent in 2023, bringing the value of the category to more than $13bn, according to drinks analytics group IWSR. In the UK, the market is worth an estimated £255mn and is expected to grow at an annual compound rate of 8 per cent until 2027, IWSR said.

Boase insisted that the presence of the biggest brewers in the market was ultimately a benefit, saying that “visibility and awareness of the category is growing . . . it’s massively helped by the big brands”.

The company has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to pubs during January — a typically slow period for the hospitality industry and exacerbated by the rise of “dry January” — by offering free pints of Lucky Saint.

The brand is available on draught in 1,000 pubs and other venues around the UK and sells in more than 7,000 in total. Boase said that large pub chains as well as independent groups were increasingly keen to stock non-alcoholic beers and it now counts Mitchell and Butlers, Greene King and Fuller’s as customers.

Last year, Lucky Saint secured £10mn in a funding round. Its backers include venture capital firms JamJar Investments and Beringea, as well as Jonathan Warburton, the chair of the eponymous bakery.

Boase said he had not given much thought to the possibility of selling Lucky Saint to one of the big brewers, which in recent years have snapped up smaller craft brewers.

“I strongly believe that in order to do justice to the opportunity that we’ve got, and build the best brand that we possibly can, that requires not thinking of building a business to exit.”

The company declined to disclose revenues, but said they had more than doubled both last year and in 2022.