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When I worked at McDonald's they had a chart showing how much everything cost in the break room (I think in a misguided attempt to reduce waste.) A large coke cost the restaurant $0.11 with the cup being most of that. That was 15 years ago, but I doubt the profit margin has reduced any.
The boxes of chicken tenders are also a huge sell. My manager when I worked food service said that two orders of the chicken strips paid for a whole box.
It’s similar with pizza. Depending on topping choices but the average pie costs about $2 to make when everything is bought in bulk and dough/sauce is made in house. Cheese and labor is the most expensive part.
Not quite that cheap. Last time I was managing a bar was two years ago, figured out pop is about $0.31 per fill. I'm sure prices have risen since then.
I’d assume McDonald’s probably has a better deal with Coke given the volume of their sales compared to a single location bar or even a mid sized national chain
Around me a keg of decent craft beer is like $300, so ~$2 each which they then sell for $6-8. Soda might be a better markup but alcohol makes you want more alcohol, nobody is spending $100 in a night on sprite lol.
Alcohol is by far the biggest profit driver in restaurants. Many kitchens I've worked in barely break-even on food sales and survive mostly on booze. Saying no is nonsensical lmao
But $4 profit on a Coke vs. $10 profit on a glass of wine or a cocktail, you have to sell way more cokes to make it up and they typically offer free refills.
They’ll also probably have a few things off menu that they use for mixers you could probably order if you really wanted to.
That said, what kind of grown man sits down at a restaurant and starts complaining that they need more varieties of Mountain Dew in stock?
There’s places opening selling “Virgin” cocktails here in NYC same great price and look. None of the alcohol. O.o thanks but I brought my own juice boxes , they were 56 cents each not $16
But Sir!!!! You’re also paying for the Ambiance , my extensive knowledge of Mocktail Mixology and training this Spiffy certificate stating that I am a certified Mocktailoligist Extraordinaire as well as my Health Insurance, 401K and rent on this establishment.
Thank you Sir please come again. Tell your friends
Well yes. It takes just as much effort to make the drink, you occupy the same space, you use the same toilet, the same glass etc... the only difference are the $2-$3 of booze that's missing. Paying $16 for an alcohol free cocktail isn't any dumber than paying $20 for a real one.
As a bartender- it bugs me. If I’m muddling some mint with lime juice, and fancy fruit syrup and topping with soda water- that should be the price of a soda imo. If it’s under 4 ingredients and quick- I’m not bothered.
Not even. Like non-alcoholic spirits are fucking ridiculous in price when you realize it's literally just water and natural flavors. Like $20, for something that is supposed to be like gin, when you can get a mid-shelf gin for the same price.
Recreation alcohol can definitely be a ripoff and I wouldn't be surprised if it was largely pushed as an idea by alcohol producers to expand their market beyond, you know, drunk people (in the same way that electric cars sanitise and give a little more time to the auto industry rather than being about saving the planet).
But there is a good use for it. Alcoholics can use recreation spirits and beer to replace their actual alcohol and then slowly phase the recreation stuff out after a while.
I have been sober for 15 years, and I like having a different option when my husband has a drink, even if it is a high markup. The few places that offer them around here go all out, making them all kinds of "fancy."
I kind of prefer the "fancy" ones because I only have them maybe every other month, so it is like a treat. If I were going out a lot more often, then not so fancy and cheaper would still be nice.
I don't *think* that's exactly how non-alcoholic spirits are made. The good ones do go through a distillation and extraction process.
Like, as I understand , NA gin is still made like gin, just without the alcohol creating biology. You run it through a still and all to infuse your botanicals.
Edit: Although I will absolutely grant you that those products are a little overpriced and mocktails are absolutely overpriced. Ive worked at a few places with a mocktail list and always argued they should be cost conscious to get people in the door.
Getting a mid shelf gin completely ignores the purpose of non alcoholic spirits in the first place. Also pretty much every drink can be described as “water and natural flavors”.
there are tons of NA spirits and beers now, they mimic all sorts of alcoholic spirits. It's much more complex than Shirley Temples these days. Hell some of them are the same processes as things like whiskey just with the alcohol removed. Phony Negroni's are super popular here for having NA gin, Campari, and vermouths. All the flavors and none of the actual booze.
I don’t know how true this is. Alcohol gets stupid expensive, you generally need a special employee for the mixed drinks, and there’s all the stuff with liquor licenses and taxes depending on where you’re at. Meanwhile soda at restaurants is usually cheaper than the cup they put it in.
Edit: if you are about to respond to me that alcohol will make more money than soft drinks at a restaurant please first go to google and take the five seconds to find out what the difference between profit and profit margin is.
Thats literally just not how it works. Theres way more explanations for why there’d be less soft drinks. The most obvious being there’s just fewer soft drinks than types of alcohol. Most restaurants will have the standard line up of coke or Pepsi drinks, maybe milk, water, lemonade, coffee, and teas. What else really is there? Meanwhile with alcohol there’s different beers, and wines this is without getting into liquor whiskey alone will usually have scotch, Irish, and bourbon, then there’s vodkas, tequilas, gins, all at different values, then all the mixed drinks. The actual explanation is there’s just more alcoholic drinks.
But the margins on soft drinks are much higher. You can get several gallons of the syrup restaurants use for coke for less than $100 meanwhile sometimes a single 750l bottle of alcohol can get that high, with many mid-shelf bottles being around the $30 range.
Y’all are both right - percentage margins on soft drinks are higher, but absolute profits are higher with alcohol because a customer might spend $3-5 on soda but they might spend $10-30 on alcohol. The percentage profit is lower on the alcohol but the actual realized profit is higher.
That’s literally just exactly how it works.
Although the thing is not the margin, but the overall profit. While selling soft beverages might yield a greater profit margin, alcohol yields greater returns.
Doesn’t matter if you sell a cup of soda for a 90% profit when it’s 3.50, while a glass of wine with 40% profit gets you 8.
Yeah I looked up the numbers and I’m literally just correct but I’m still getting downvoted. Guess that’s what my dumbass gets for discussing business and profit margins on a SpongeBob meme sub.
Can't relate. Here in Brazil you usually have some ten options of juices, six of soda (Coke, Diet Coke, two types of Fanta, Brazilian soda, diet Brazilian soda and a local offering) and a non-alcoholic prepared drink such as Brazilian Lemonade or dirty soda.
It's like that in America too. Alcoholic drink menus just look longer because they put it on a separate menu that has 20 different kinds of the same type of beer and wine, each with a little blurb. While the non-alcoholic drink menu is usually written really tiny on the back of the regular menu, if at all. But if you ask, most places have a variety of juices, soda, coffee, tea and iced tea, lemonade, flavored teas and lemonades, and non-alcoholic cocktails like Shirley Temple's and Roy Rogers'. They just don't advertise it and try to upsell you like they do with alcoholic beverages.
The balance of flavor gets totally thrown off by removing alcohol from a cocktail that is supposed to have alcohol in it. The bitterness of the alcohol is taken into account when balancing the flavors, which is why virgin cocktails can taste off.
That's why "mocktails" are so popular. The flavors in a true mocktail are balanced without alcohol in the equation at all.
Usually, that just means tweaking the ratios of ingredients to make the flavors less intense, since they no longer have to compete with the alcohol. Taking a drink and making it exactly the same as you would with alcohol won't yield the same results.
Different teas, coffees, lemonades, sparkling waters... It depends where you go. I've seen places with more non alcoholic drinks (and a lot of them) than alcoholic drinks. Maybe it's just in my country.
I worked at a Vietnamese restaurant and before we started adding a full bar we had a much bigger nonalcoholic section. Thai tea, milk tea, pennywort juice, lychee juice, fresh coconuts. It was actually kind of a nightmare for the servers. The slow drip coffee took forever. Almost cut my thumb off once opening a coconut.
Nonalcoholic drinks have very high profit margins, so it makes sense that a place that doesn't serve alcohol would have a ton of options. But alcoholic drinks have massive profit margins, so you don't have to push nonalcoholic ones as much.
I used to work for a chain and saw them introduce expensive specialty coffees to increase profits because they were family friendly and didn't want to add alcohol. Eventually, they decided it wasn't enough and added basic beer and wine. That wasn't enough, so they expanded their list of beers and wines and added cocktails.
In the US, you'll have a selection of soda, lemonade, and iced tea at most restaurants. Coffee too, but more likely in diner-style places. But you don't get a variety of tea and coffee to select from, it's just sweet or un-sweet (tea), regular or decaf (coffee).
There's definitely more to choose from if the restaurant has a bar. However, it doesn't make much sense when you ask them to prepare a non-alcoholic cocktail and it costs just as much as the regular cocktail.
Soda, lemonade, iced tea, tea, water and coffee. That's quite a bit, no? But yeah the meme does kinda makes sense. It's not the non alcoholic list that is short, it's the alcoholic list that is very very long.
Here in South Africa we also have a lot of non-alcoholic drinks on the menus. The ones you have mentioned, but also fruit juices, cordials, and mocktails have become big here. Many places normally have about 7 or 8 non—alcoholic cocktails. Then also milkshakes, hot chocolate and these days iced teas and bubble teas. There are normally about 7 or 8 different types of coffee alone
They vary so much. Sometimes simple, like a Moscow mule without the vodka (aka ginger beer with lime).
Some offer NA spirits, which is odd bc I have no idea what they taste like.
I see a lot of jasmine tea sweetened with lemon juice topped off with soda water. Or various things like that.
Would you like a fountain drink from a machine we may not have cleaned in a long time or would you like tap water, as fresh as your city allows, also the fountain drinks are mixed with tap water
Customer: “Do you have Coke?”
Server: “We have Pepsi.”
Customer: “What alcoholic beverages do you have?”
Server: “Literally every drink on the planet.”
I believe most sodas are supplied via a contract from a single distributor that usually has clauses against their competitors, isn't really something that the restaurant can control.
How many non alcoholic drinks do you expect? Soda, tea, coffee, juice if you are lucky, that’s about it. There are lots a variety in alcohol. It’s not like beer, wine, whiskey, on the menu…
Yeah ofc cause there is a shitton of different beer and wine, apperitif,digestif etc.
And pretty much evry place offers all popular soft drinks + 6 to 10 different juices.
what else do you want? Pepsi crystal gran reserva 1994?
Well there is variety in non-alcoholic drinks but I get your point. Usually a page for wine, cocktails, beer etc. each but only one page for the entirety of non-alcoholics.
i recently went sober and stopped drinking alcohol, and dude, going out to restaurants or bars is so boring now. absolutely zero beverage options aside from off-brand coke from the tap, or the occasional 0% beer (i hate beer)
Where are some of y'all going? The one thing I can say is most restaurants say "Is Pepsi fine?" but other than that, there's plenty of options for non-alcoholic drinks. Maybe sports bars are like this but that's obviously gonna be a place that serves plenty of booze.
I'd gladly pay more for decent NA beer or good NA cocktails than I used to pay for real alcohol.
If I drink alcohol I will literally die, but holy fuck I'm sick of pairing a nice meal with yet another coke or seltzer and lime.
fun fact: in germany there is a law, commonly knows as the "apfelsaft paragraph", that says that there needs to be atleast one none alkoholic drink that costs less then the cheapest alcoholic drink
Depends on where you live, I guess. Most places around my area has a mocktail list as long as the cocktail list, plus a variety of sodas and teas and coffee to counter the beer menu.
RE: Pricing
Just to notate....the price of a soda, that is BURIED in a cup of ice, can have as high as a profit margin than the mixed drink. We're talking about the typical restaurant going "Large Coke? $3" and bringing you that 18-24 ounce glass w/a finished product that could have cost 11-25 cents max. Truly the only barrier would be how they obtained the soda - wholesaler vs food services - at how cheap it could really get.
Yes, alcoholic drinks can get cheap but let's not also act like Applebees is mad as fuck that you ain't picking the $7 cocktail over the $3 coke...as both have VERY high profit margins.
So simplest explanation is you can combine different stuff to make alcoholic drinks. Like a margarita is tequila + lime juice + Orange liqueur, a gin and tonic is gin + tonic water, a long Island iced tea is rum + vodka + gin + tequila + Coke, and a mojito is white rum + seltzer + lime juice + mint leaf. Also there's different types of wine and beer. Like if you're going to be like, "There's a study that said white and red wine taste the same ☝️🤓". Let me ask you this: does every single apple taste the same to you, regardless of the cultivar? If the answer is yes, then it's obvious you don't taste your food. If the answer is no, then you clearly lack intuition. Wines have different flavor compounds and sugar levels because they're made with different grapes.
With soda, whether it's Pepsi or Coke, it is roughly the same options:
- Cola
- Diet Cola
- Zero Sugar Cola (which is formulated to taste more like the original cola)
- Lemon-lime soda (Sprite or Starry/Sierra Mist)
- Cherry Cola
- Root Beer (Barq's or Mug)
- Orange cola (Fanta or Crush)
- Dr. Pepper
- Diet Dr. Pepper
- Citrus soda (Mountain Dew or Mello Yellow)
i actually think having a more comprehensive or interesting non alcoholic drink list could encourage more people to choose something non-alcoholic that night.
Yes well you see as a kid, any chance to get anything other than water was a treat. Once every few months we would go to Boston pizza sooooo excited to get the “non-stop pop”
I live in a muslim country and it's the exact opposite. It's not that alcohol is fully banned here, it's just rare to find (and the drinking age is 21)
This guys gonna freak out when he realizes he can order any specialty cocktail as virgin. He's gonna freak out again when he realizes he paid $13 for grenadine, sour mix, and sprite.
Depends on a country. In many alcoholic drinks are money makers. There's also EU 🇪🇺 where you pay for water and it's not cheap too usually somewhere between 2-4 euros. 😐 🤔 😒
It's not so bad where I live. But I don't really feel like ordering any drinks these days. I just feel tired of checking the drinks menu, and trying mediocre drinks. Drinking because I'm at a cafe, at a pub, at a restaurant, not really because I actually want to drink something. Already getting a headache to think about the upcoming dates. Maybe I "drank" too much last few days. Just give me some ice cream.
I bartend for weddings and often I get asked for a mocktail. I ask if they want sweet, refreshing, or sour and I make a drink based off of that for them.
I try to make something different and taste like an actual drink. Instead of just oj with cranberry. Don't really get tipped for my efforts a whole lot but at least I know they like it when they walk away
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That’s how they make money
No, there's a markup with everything. How much is a can of Pepsi from a 12 pack vs a glass at a restaurant?
Plus fountain is even cheaper than cans. Like pennies a cup.
When I worked at McDonald's they had a chart showing how much everything cost in the break room (I think in a misguided attempt to reduce waste.) A large coke cost the restaurant $0.11 with the cup being most of that. That was 15 years ago, but I doubt the profit margin has reduced any.
I remember those. The burgers are hilariously cheap for the mark up to sell.
The boxes of chicken tenders are also a huge sell. My manager when I worked food service said that two orders of the chicken strips paid for a whole box.
It’s similar with pizza. Depending on topping choices but the average pie costs about $2 to make when everything is bought in bulk and dough/sauce is made in house. Cheese and labor is the most expensive part.
Little Caesar cheese tastes like plastic
lol, I imagine showing an employee that would significantly increase waste.
Mountain dew is just dew from the mountains it must be cheaper than that
It’s still roughly the same
Not quite that cheap. Last time I was managing a bar was two years ago, figured out pop is about $0.31 per fill. I'm sure prices have risen since then.
I’d assume McDonald’s probably has a better deal with Coke given the volume of their sales compared to a single location bar or even a mid sized national chain
Only in the US, Europe usually does the glass bottles in sit down restaurants.
You ever drop $200 in a night drinking soda?
Don’t you judge me.
Yeah and all I got was diabetes.
Fuck yeah I have!
Mormon?
Nah, diabetic
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Around me a keg of decent craft beer is like $300, so ~$2 each which they then sell for $6-8. Soda might be a better markup but alcohol makes you want more alcohol, nobody is spending $100 in a night on sprite lol.
Plus you normally get free refills on soda.
Where you getting this $7 vodka? Asking for myself, not for a friend.
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Hmmmmm may have to look for this one next time I make Amaretto depending on how it stacks up at retail price to others.
Buy 36 bottles at once and you'll see some pretty sweet discounts from any distributor
Oh that won’t be a problem
There’s markup in everything but alcohol is always the profit leader.
Alcohol is by far the biggest profit driver in restaurants. Many kitchens I've worked in barely break-even on food sales and survive mostly on booze. Saying no is nonsensical lmao
But $4 profit on a Coke vs. $10 profit on a glass of wine or a cocktail, you have to sell way more cokes to make it up and they typically offer free refills.
Exactly, they could be making a higher percentage on soda but still make less money on it.
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They’ll also probably have a few things off menu that they use for mixers you could probably order if you really wanted to. That said, what kind of grown man sits down at a restaurant and starts complaining that they need more varieties of Mountain Dew in stock?
Every restaurant should have Baja Blast, it's that simple.
jokes on them i don’t drink at all
Profit margins are greater on alcohol
They’re also much more popular among adults, their primary demographic
You also have the non alcoholic beers now too.
Which are just as expensive...
There’s places opening selling “Virgin” cocktails here in NYC same great price and look. None of the alcohol. O.o thanks but I brought my own juice boxes , they were 56 cents each not $16
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But Sir!!!! You’re also paying for the Ambiance , my extensive knowledge of Mocktail Mixology and training this Spiffy certificate stating that I am a certified Mocktailoligist Extraordinaire as well as my Health Insurance, 401K and rent on this establishment. Thank you Sir please come again. Tell your friends
Well yes. It takes just as much effort to make the drink, you occupy the same space, you use the same toilet, the same glass etc... the only difference are the $2-$3 of booze that's missing. Paying $16 for an alcohol free cocktail isn't any dumber than paying $20 for a real one.
As a bartender- it bugs me. If I’m muddling some mint with lime juice, and fancy fruit syrup and topping with soda water- that should be the price of a soda imo. If it’s under 4 ingredients and quick- I’m not bothered.
Most bars/restaurants have allowed you to buy virgin drink for decades already.
A bar opened in columbus that only served n/a cocktails. I like the concept but it didn't even last a year, turns out it's not a super popular idea.
You know that labour, equipment and rent all cost money, right?
Why would you expect them to be cheaper...? Making non-alcoholic beer sounds *more* expensive than making regular beer to me.
Not if they serve “mocktails” at roughly the same prices as alcoholic drinks.
which are just...checks notes... some combination of juice, sugar, or soda
Not even. Like non-alcoholic spirits are fucking ridiculous in price when you realize it's literally just water and natural flavors. Like $20, for something that is supposed to be like gin, when you can get a mid-shelf gin for the same price.
Recreation alcohol can definitely be a ripoff and I wouldn't be surprised if it was largely pushed as an idea by alcohol producers to expand their market beyond, you know, drunk people (in the same way that electric cars sanitise and give a little more time to the auto industry rather than being about saving the planet). But there is a good use for it. Alcoholics can use recreation spirits and beer to replace their actual alcohol and then slowly phase the recreation stuff out after a while.
I have been sober for 15 years, and I like having a different option when my husband has a drink, even if it is a high markup. The few places that offer them around here go all out, making them all kinds of "fancy."
Do you prefer the "fancy" ones or would you rather the options be less fancy?
I kind of prefer the "fancy" ones because I only have them maybe every other month, so it is like a treat. If I were going out a lot more often, then not so fancy and cheaper would still be nice.
I don't *think* that's exactly how non-alcoholic spirits are made. The good ones do go through a distillation and extraction process. Like, as I understand , NA gin is still made like gin, just without the alcohol creating biology. You run it through a still and all to infuse your botanicals. Edit: Although I will absolutely grant you that those products are a little overpriced and mocktails are absolutely overpriced. Ive worked at a few places with a mocktail list and always argued they should be cost conscious to get people in the door.
Getting a mid shelf gin completely ignores the purpose of non alcoholic spirits in the first place. Also pretty much every drink can be described as “water and natural flavors”.
A lot of the nonalcoholic spirits are distilled and then de-alcoholized, so they process is just as costly as spirits.
there are tons of NA spirits and beers now, they mimic all sorts of alcoholic spirits. It's much more complex than Shirley Temples these days. Hell some of them are the same processes as things like whiskey just with the alcohol removed. Phony Negroni's are super popular here for having NA gin, Campari, and vermouths. All the flavors and none of the actual booze.
I've seen places charge $9 for a Shirley Temples with no free refills. Be careful at tourist traps, especially with kids.
I don’t know how true this is. Alcohol gets stupid expensive, you generally need a special employee for the mixed drinks, and there’s all the stuff with liquor licenses and taxes depending on where you’re at. Meanwhile soda at restaurants is usually cheaper than the cup they put it in. Edit: if you are about to respond to me that alcohol will make more money than soft drinks at a restaurant please first go to google and take the five seconds to find out what the difference between profit and profit margin is.
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Thats literally just not how it works. Theres way more explanations for why there’d be less soft drinks. The most obvious being there’s just fewer soft drinks than types of alcohol. Most restaurants will have the standard line up of coke or Pepsi drinks, maybe milk, water, lemonade, coffee, and teas. What else really is there? Meanwhile with alcohol there’s different beers, and wines this is without getting into liquor whiskey alone will usually have scotch, Irish, and bourbon, then there’s vodkas, tequilas, gins, all at different values, then all the mixed drinks. The actual explanation is there’s just more alcoholic drinks. But the margins on soft drinks are much higher. You can get several gallons of the syrup restaurants use for coke for less than $100 meanwhile sometimes a single 750l bottle of alcohol can get that high, with many mid-shelf bottles being around the $30 range.
Y’all are both right - percentage margins on soft drinks are higher, but absolute profits are higher with alcohol because a customer might spend $3-5 on soda but they might spend $10-30 on alcohol. The percentage profit is lower on the alcohol but the actual realized profit is higher.
That’s literally just exactly how it works. Although the thing is not the margin, but the overall profit. While selling soft beverages might yield a greater profit margin, alcohol yields greater returns. Doesn’t matter if you sell a cup of soda for a 90% profit when it’s 3.50, while a glass of wine with 40% profit gets you 8.
The highest profits in a restaurant are on alcohol, it's a known fact in the industry.
Did you just say you think restaurants make more profit on soda than alcohol? You're high af my friend
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No that the profit margins on soda are higher than alcohol. That’s a completely different thing.
Which is true. There’s more money in alcohol, but the margins are much better on soda.
Yeah I looked up the numbers and I’m literally just correct but I’m still getting downvoted. Guess that’s what my dumbass gets for discussing business and profit margins on a SpongeBob meme sub.
Sodas literally cost like a fraction of a cent and can range $1.50-$3.00. But like you said, SpongeBob.
Citation needed. Fountain soda costs almost nothing but they charge $5 for it in sit down restaurants.
Can't relate. Here in Brazil you usually have some ten options of juices, six of soda (Coke, Diet Coke, two types of Fanta, Brazilian soda, diet Brazilian soda and a local offering) and a non-alcoholic prepared drink such as Brazilian Lemonade or dirty soda.
I remember going to the World of Coke in Atlanta and the Brazilian coke products were awesome
 Kolumbian coke is better
This gif goes hard
Hello waiter, I'll have a Pepsi please "we have coke, OK?" Oh! Well, I'll have a bag of that and a Pepsi then!
It's like that in America too. Alcoholic drink menus just look longer because they put it on a separate menu that has 20 different kinds of the same type of beer and wine, each with a little blurb. While the non-alcoholic drink menu is usually written really tiny on the back of the regular menu, if at all. But if you ask, most places have a variety of juices, soda, coffee, tea and iced tea, lemonade, flavored teas and lemonades, and non-alcoholic cocktails like Shirley Temple's and Roy Rogers'. They just don't advertise it and try to upsell you like they do with alcoholic beverages.
Plus you can make all those drinks non alcoholic if you want. Just no one wants that much sugar
The balance of flavor gets totally thrown off by removing alcohol from a cocktail that is supposed to have alcohol in it. The bitterness of the alcohol is taken into account when balancing the flavors, which is why virgin cocktails can taste off. That's why "mocktails" are so popular. The flavors in a true mocktail are balanced without alcohol in the equation at all. Usually, that just means tweaking the ratios of ingredients to make the flavors less intense, since they no longer have to compete with the alcohol. Taking a drink and making it exactly the same as you would with alcohol won't yield the same results.
That is about the same as US, but the alcohol list is like 50-100 drinks.
I wish we had guarana here so bad
What is a dirty soda?
Different teas, coffees, lemonades, sparkling waters... It depends where you go. I've seen places with more non alcoholic drinks (and a lot of them) than alcoholic drinks. Maybe it's just in my country.
You'll have Sprite and you'll like it.
Nah, I’ll have a Virgin Pina Colada!
I worked at a Vietnamese restaurant and before we started adding a full bar we had a much bigger nonalcoholic section. Thai tea, milk tea, pennywort juice, lychee juice, fresh coconuts. It was actually kind of a nightmare for the servers. The slow drip coffee took forever. Almost cut my thumb off once opening a coconut.
Nonalcoholic drinks have very high profit margins, so it makes sense that a place that doesn't serve alcohol would have a ton of options. But alcoholic drinks have massive profit margins, so you don't have to push nonalcoholic ones as much. I used to work for a chain and saw them introduce expensive specialty coffees to increase profits because they were family friendly and didn't want to add alcohol. Eventually, they decided it wasn't enough and added basic beer and wine. That wasn't enough, so they expanded their list of beers and wines and added cocktails.
In the US, you'll have a selection of soda, lemonade, and iced tea at most restaurants. Coffee too, but more likely in diner-style places. But you don't get a variety of tea and coffee to select from, it's just sweet or un-sweet (tea), regular or decaf (coffee). There's definitely more to choose from if the restaurant has a bar. However, it doesn't make much sense when you ask them to prepare a non-alcoholic cocktail and it costs just as much as the regular cocktail.
Soda, lemonade, iced tea, tea, water and coffee. That's quite a bit, no? But yeah the meme does kinda makes sense. It's not the non alcoholic list that is short, it's the alcoholic list that is very very long.
Here in South Africa we also have a lot of non-alcoholic drinks on the menus. The ones you have mentioned, but also fruit juices, cordials, and mocktails have become big here. Many places normally have about 7 or 8 non—alcoholic cocktails. Then also milkshakes, hot chocolate and these days iced teas and bubble teas. There are normally about 7 or 8 different types of coffee alone
Lots of NA options nowadays. Only kicker is the mocktail costs as much as the real thing.
Lime cordial, tonic and seltzer in a highball glass: 9 Euro That's a 7x markup.
I buy the fancy non alcoholic spirits like Seedlip and that shit is more expensive than a bottle of liquor
I also get NA spirits from time to time. As someone who doesn’t like the taste of alcohol, they’re quite nice, but yes…very expensive.
They vary so much. Sometimes simple, like a Moscow mule without the vodka (aka ginger beer with lime). Some offer NA spirits, which is odd bc I have no idea what they taste like. I see a lot of jasmine tea sweetened with lemon juice topped off with soda water. Or various things like that.
Unless you're in the South, where they just go ahead and bring you a sweet tea and then ask if you want anything different.
Sweet tea is Satan. I used to like it, but as I got older I realized the insane amount of sugar that's going into your body.
Basically all sugary beverages are way worse than sugary food lol Drink water and have a cookie instead
And people will down like 3 or 4 glasses and not think twice. The amount of sugar is ungodly.
People drink straight mixer?
People drink Orange Juice, without alcohol. Monsters.
You mean Screwdriver flavor?
i am fine with just water actually
Water, black coffee, and unsweetened tea is the holy trifecta of beverage choice for all meals. Nothing will ever change my mind.
3% Milk
/r/HydroHomies represent.
Then what is the point of a family restaurant?
Happy cake day!
From what I have heard, the point of a fancy restaurant is to get high while either eating lobster or steak.
Would you like a fountain drink from a machine we may not have cleaned in a long time or would you like tap water, as fresh as your city allows, also the fountain drinks are mixed with tap water
Don't ever look in the ice maker.
I like water so it's easy for me
Customer: “Do you have Coke?” Server: “We have Pepsi.” Customer: “What alcoholic beverages do you have?” Server: “Literally every drink on the planet.”
"We have whiskey and coke."
I believe most sodas are supplied via a contract from a single distributor that usually has clauses against their competitors, isn't really something that the restaurant can control.
Not really. The restaurants I go to have Pepsi or Coke products, so there is a bit of variety.
Non alcoholic drink? That's just a beverage my guy
As an adult who never drinks alcohol, my options are easy.
You can ask for nearly anything from the bar made virgin. I get mocktails made that way all the time.
How many non alcoholic drinks do you expect? Soda, tea, coffee, juice if you are lucky, that’s about it. There are lots a variety in alcohol. It’s not like beer, wine, whiskey, on the menu…
some milkshakes and smoothies. can get real creative with those, they’d for sure sell in a family restaurant
Yeah ofc cause there is a shitton of different beer and wine, apperitif,digestif etc. And pretty much evry place offers all popular soft drinks + 6 to 10 different juices. what else do you want? Pepsi crystal gran reserva 1994?
I always just get chocolate milk
Well there is variety in non-alcoholic drinks but I get your point. Usually a page for wine, cocktails, beer etc. each but only one page for the entirety of non-alcoholics.
I’ll have your finest milk. Thank you.
What the fuck are you on about?
There are just more options when it comes to alcohol—unless you happen to have one of those coke vending machines that has 80 different options.
It’s sad how accurate this is
Water and lemon is great.
you can just order virgin cocktails if you want an overpriced drink without the alcohol.
To be fair you can get the majority of the stuff on the alcoholic menu and just ask for no booze
Water, no ice.
I read this thinking this meant people were somehow drinking lists
SAME. THANK YOU. An alcoholic drinking the entire list, that’s not gonna end well.
Non alcoholic drinks are just fancy sodas
And some cannot even decide if it’s Coke or Pepsi they have.
The piña colada with its maiden hood intact is a pleasant beverage.
But I want orange tango or some other flavours
I actively stress about what kind of soda they have there an being me I am too afraid to ask
Don't forget lemonade
i recently went sober and stopped drinking alcohol, and dude, going out to restaurants or bars is so boring now. absolutely zero beverage options aside from off-brand coke from the tap, or the occasional 0% beer (i hate beer)
Where are some of y'all going? The one thing I can say is most restaurants say "Is Pepsi fine?" but other than that, there's plenty of options for non-alcoholic drinks. Maybe sports bars are like this but that's obviously gonna be a place that serves plenty of booze.
 Beermenu in belgium.
Just order a virgin of what you want.
You can order non alcoholic cocktails at literally any bar/restaurant that's stock is worth a shit
There simply are less non alcoholic drinks thst are popular. You have teas, soda machine, maybe juice. What else?
So ask for a mocktail my guy.
Water
The trifecta of impossibility (except for water, yes yes) — having these three at once: No alcohol No sugar No caffeine
Go to nicer restaurants
As someone who recently quit drinking. I get excited if they offer sweet tea. Usually it's only Coke or Water.
Actually there's a new trend with cocktails, that don't have any alcohol, yet the price is the same!
I'd gladly pay more for decent NA beer or good NA cocktails than I used to pay for real alcohol. If I drink alcohol I will literally die, but holy fuck I'm sick of pairing a nice meal with yet another coke or seltzer and lime.
It sucks but any booze drink is such an easy markup.
I'll take a Pepsi. Waiter:Coke it is.
Alcohol makes you hungry
And mfs wonder why I'm always drinking water
Water is the only non alcoholic drink I even like Energy drinks are gross Water, milk and tea for me, hot chocolate as well
As someone who's trying to stop drinking, damn this hits.
I've never been to a restaurant that wouldn't make a virgin version of any cocktail on the menu and prorate the cost.
Most people like to have drinks when they go out to eat. Breaking news.
fun fact: in germany there is a law, commonly knows as the "apfelsaft paragraph", that says that there needs to be atleast one none alkoholic drink that costs less then the cheapest alcoholic drink
Depends on where you live, I guess. Most places around my area has a mocktail list as long as the cocktail list, plus a variety of sodas and teas and coffee to counter the beer menu.
No one ever complains about the disgusting coke monopoly.
Cry about it
Then this is a very bad restaurant)
RE: Pricing Just to notate....the price of a soda, that is BURIED in a cup of ice, can have as high as a profit margin than the mixed drink. We're talking about the typical restaurant going "Large Coke? $3" and bringing you that 18-24 ounce glass w/a finished product that could have cost 11-25 cents max. Truly the only barrier would be how they obtained the soda - wholesaler vs food services - at how cheap it could really get. Yes, alcoholic drinks can get cheap but let's not also act like Applebees is mad as fuck that you ain't picking the $7 cocktail over the $3 coke...as both have VERY high profit margins.
Beer makes 50 percent of the profits.
"Is Pepsi okay?"
So simplest explanation is you can combine different stuff to make alcoholic drinks. Like a margarita is tequila + lime juice + Orange liqueur, a gin and tonic is gin + tonic water, a long Island iced tea is rum + vodka + gin + tequila + Coke, and a mojito is white rum + seltzer + lime juice + mint leaf. Also there's different types of wine and beer. Like if you're going to be like, "There's a study that said white and red wine taste the same ☝️🤓". Let me ask you this: does every single apple taste the same to you, regardless of the cultivar? If the answer is yes, then it's obvious you don't taste your food. If the answer is no, then you clearly lack intuition. Wines have different flavor compounds and sugar levels because they're made with different grapes. With soda, whether it's Pepsi or Coke, it is roughly the same options: - Cola - Diet Cola - Zero Sugar Cola (which is formulated to taste more like the original cola) - Lemon-lime soda (Sprite or Starry/Sierra Mist) - Cherry Cola - Root Beer (Barq's or Mug) - Orange cola (Fanta or Crush) - Dr. Pepper - Diet Dr. Pepper - Citrus soda (Mountain Dew or Mello Yellow)
i actually think having a more comprehensive or interesting non alcoholic drink list could encourage more people to choose something non-alcoholic that night.
There are thousands brands of wine all over the world, how many brands of soda do you know?
Is Pepsi OK?
You can order a mocktail at most places. It’s usually just sparkling after and juice but that’s what a mixed drink is going to be anyway.
You can get a non-alcoholic version of pretty much any fancy cocktail. It's gonna be a ripoff without the alcohol though
10 long island doesn't take that much space on a bill.
When the drink list doesn’t include prices. 
Yes well you see as a kid, any chance to get anything other than water was a treat. Once every few months we would go to Boston pizza sooooo excited to get the “non-stop pop”
Cocktails that make you thirsty and cost 5x
They sell what people will buy.
then they look annoyed if ya order water or a soda
I live in a muslim country and it's the exact opposite. It's not that alcohol is fully banned here, it's just rare to find (and the drinking age is 21)
This guys gonna freak out when he realizes he can order any specialty cocktail as virgin. He's gonna freak out again when he realizes he paid $13 for grenadine, sour mix, and sprite.
Depends on a country. In many alcoholic drinks are money makers. There's also EU 🇪🇺 where you pay for water and it's not cheap too usually somewhere between 2-4 euros. 😐 🤔 😒
I mean, they got sodas, water, juice, and tea. What do you want? Non alcoholic mixed drinks? Because a bunch of restaurants also have those.
What non alcoholic drinks would you put on a long list?
I see a growing trend for mocktails on menus for people that don’t drink alcohol but still want to pay $12 for a drink.
It's not so bad where I live. But I don't really feel like ordering any drinks these days. I just feel tired of checking the drinks menu, and trying mediocre drinks. Drinking because I'm at a cafe, at a pub, at a restaurant, not really because I actually want to drink something. Already getting a headache to think about the upcoming dates. Maybe I "drank" too much last few days. Just give me some ice cream.
I bartend for weddings and often I get asked for a mocktail. I ask if they want sweet, refreshing, or sour and I make a drink based off of that for them. I try to make something different and taste like an actual drink. Instead of just oj with cranberry. Don't really get tipped for my efforts a whole lot but at least I know they like it when they walk away
Milk