Abby Ehmann owns two bars across the street from each other in New York’s East Village – Lucky and Hekate Café & Elixir Lounge.
She plans to celebrate St Patrick’s Day at both places this Friday. “I am a sucker for a holiday, especially if there is glitter or confetti involved,” Ehmann said.
Both bars will be decorated with green decor like sparkling garland and signs that read, “Kiss Me I’m Irish.” On the menu will be corned beef and cabbage and green cookies shaped like shamrocks. Irish folk music will be blaring on the sound system.
There will also be a slew of drinks: Irish car bombs (a shot of Irish cream and Irish whiskey dropped into a glass of stout); Irish coffees (Irish whiskey mixed with coffee); and Guinness.
St Patrick’s Day Quiz 2024: 50 questions to test your Irishology
How St Patrick’s Day came to Ireland – plus some handy phrases for this weekend’s festival
Sheelah take a bow: St Patrick’s wife? Probably not – she was far more important than that
Best of Ireland: 54 Irish curses you won’t have learned in school
The only difference is that Hekate Café & Elixir Lounge is a “sober bar” and the cocktails will be alcohol-free.
Ehmann found everything she needed to pull it off: “Irish coffees are easy because we have coffee anyway and we are going to bring in whipped cream.” She also has Guinness 0.0, the nonalcoholic version of the Irish stout; a recipe for nonalcoholic Baileys; and even nonalcoholic bourbon and whiskey, like Kentucky 74 and Lyre’s.
“It’s a holiday,” she said. “Even people who don’t drink are going to want to socialise. I thought, ‘What can I do to create this sense of community?’”
St Patrick’s Day, especially in the United States, has often been associated with drinking. “I don’t need to tell you that the holiday in New York City seems like Santacon, except it’s green instead of red,” said Jack McGarry, an owner of Dead Rabbit, an Irish bar that started in Manhattan’s Financial District and now has locations nationwide.
This year, however, due to a higher demand for sober revelry – and new alcohol-free products on the market hoping to meet it – more bars and restaurants are offering ways to celebrate duly.
According to a consumer report by Drizly, 38 per cent of Gen Z-ers and 25 per cent of millennials said they drank more nonalcoholic products in 2022 than in 2021. Nielsen, the market research firm, found that sales of nonalcoholic drinks in the United States grew 20 per cent in 2022 from the prior year.
In Great Falls, Montana, people who wish to avoid the pubs after the St Patrick’s Day parade can head to Luna Coffee Bar for a holiday-themed trivia night.
[ St Patrick’s Day festival: All you need to know about the paradesOpens in new window ]
In Sonoma, California, Good Times Alc Free, a group that throws alcohol-free pop-up parties, is holding a St Patrick’s Day party at a coffee roaster.
Sober St Patrick’s Day, a group in New York City that strives to make the holiday about Irish culture and not binge-drinking, will march in the parade down Fifth Avenue this year.
Some bar owners said that one of the reasons they want to throw alcohol-free parties is because they have so many more products with which to get creative. “There are hundreds of spirit-free products now,” Ehmann said. “Five years ago none of these things existed.”
Guinness 0.0, for example, was released a year ago. “Last year we had Guinness 0.0 for St Patrick’s Day but only in very low quantities,” said Mark Phillips, who is the US head of beer and hard seltzer for Diageo, which owns Guinness 0.0, and plans to distribute samples on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday after ringing the closing bell.
Those who don’t want to drink appreciate the ability to partake in the festivities.
Lennon Medvick (29), a bartender in Cleveland, Ohio, went to the hospital with acute pancreatitis on St Patrick’s Day 2020 “after being a bottle of bourbon a day alcoholic for many years”.
He’s looking forward to this year’s celebration. “I generally find being sober to be easier now than it used to be,” he said. “I always enjoyed the drinks that went with holidays – Guinness for St Patty’s; Christmas ales and spiked nog over the Christmas holidays; cheap American beer on the Fourth of July – so I have really enjoyed being able to still have those drinks and rituals, just without the alcohol.”
Some say the holiday is not supposed to be about getting drunk but focused on family, food and culture.
“In Ireland, St Patrick’s Day is less centred on a drinking occasion and more of a celebration for the whole family,” according to Moira Breslin, the founder of the Irish Whiskey Festival, held last weekend in New York City, where Guinness 0.0 and Arkay Alcohol-Free Irish Whiskey were served.
Dead Rabbit is taking a similar approach by is serving Irish breakfast all day, alongside lamb stew. Beoga, a modern folk band, is flying in from Ireland to perform.
The bar’s owner McGarry, who hails from Belfast: “The way you guys celebrate Thanksgiving is the way we celebrate St Patrick’s Day.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.