Dry January is nearly here and whether you’re newly sober or seeking a healthier start to the year, Dry January offers a unique opportunity. This challenge provides a chance to reset your habits and improve your health and wellbeing.
The Benefits of Dry January
- Improved physical health: Participants often report of noticeable improvements to their physical health, including better sleep quality, weight loss, improved liver function.
- Improved Mental Health: The absence of alcohols depressant effects can lead to lowered anxiety, better general mood and clearer thinking.
- Financial Benefits: The average price of a pint now sits at £4.79, which when you’re a regular drinker can add up- leading to big savings when this is no longer an expense.
- Increase Productivity and Energy: Without the constant hangovers, poor sleep and lethargy associated with alcohol, benefit from increased energy and productivity.
- Develop Healthier Alcohol Habits: Dry January may act as a catalyst for healthier long-term drinking habits.
Tips to Survive Dry January
- Remove temptation: Sometimes being around alcohol can create temptation, try removing all alcohol from your home and create non-drinking plans with friends and family, or if in a setting with alcohol opt for a non-alcoholic alternative.
- Tell the people around you: Make the people around you aware that you are taking part in Dry January to prevent social pressures and instead receive encouragement and support.
- Find alternatives: Low and no alcohol options can be a great substitute if you still want to experience the taste of alcohol
- Create new habits: If you would usually sit down for a glass of wine after work, replace this habit with something new like going for a walk. This will distract you from usual alcohol-based habits and can introduce new healthier habits.
How Your Brewery Can Get Ahead in Dry January
- If reduced trade gives you some extra time in your production schedule, consider using it to experiment with sustainable techniques and processes that might be scalable in the future. For instance, explore if modifying your cleaning and rinsing practices could help your brewery reduce water consumption. Or get ahead of rising carbon dioxide costs by looking into whether carbon capture units could be installed to recover CO2 generated during fermentation. Look into your packaging and explore options that may improve efficiency, reduce emissions and bring down costs
- The market for no and low alcohol drinks continues to grow much faster than alcoholic drinks, especially amongst younger people. Alongside the commercial benefits of entering this market, these products also tend to have a smaller environmental footprint than alcoholic beverages, as they tend to use less barley. If you haven’t already developed a low/ no alcohol beer, use this reduced trade time to look into introducing a low alcohol beer into your offering.
- Consider that there may also be an increase in the number of people cutting out meat, fish and dairy for Veganuary. Experiment with removing ingredients such as lactose and isinglass, to enhance your offering and have variety of options to suit all preferences.
- If you have a taproom or a unique brewery, consider running brewery tours or tasting sessions. This could either be alcohol free based or on promotion as Dry January ends to allow those who have completed the challenge to celebrate with a refreshing pint.
If you wanted to explore how you can expand your business with new equipment for no/low beers or improved sustainability practices, get in touch to see how Moorgate Finance can provide you with funding to get your ideas into action.
Apply Now and our team will be in touch to discuss your bespoke finance options!