Regular Arkansas Business readers will remember learning last week about Assistant Professor Scott Lafontaine at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and his work to train craft brewers. But the beer expert has other research interests, namely improving the quality of nonalcoholic beers and beverages, an expanding industry.
The nonalcoholic beverage sector is “really growing,” Lafontaine said. That’s because Gen Z is drinking less alcohol than previous generations. More than a quarter, 27%, claim they never drink, and the millennial generation also consumes less alcohol than previous generations.
One of the goals of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest brewer in the world, is to have 20% of their products by 2025 be no or low-alcohol beverages, Lafontaine said. “When you start to look at drinking habits of Gen Z, you have a large proportion of Gen Z that are nondrinkers. These companies, to appeal to them, are moving into that nonalcoholic development space, and one of those things is nonalcoholic beers, and there’s a lot of interest in that.”
He added, “If you go into a liquor store now, just over the past year, you would have seen the nonalcoholic beer section grow immensely.”
The nonalcoholic beer market was valued at $22 billion in 2022 and is expected to show compound annual growth of 5.5% between 2023 and 2032, according to Global Market Insights.
“We’re starting research projects here on how to improve those products,” Lafontaine said. “But we still don’t know as an industry why is that person going to that? So I have some research under development with psychologists around that.”
The health benefits of nonalcoholic beers are also another area of research.
His graduate student is designing nonalcoholic beers with Arkansas rice. “We’re looking at how to improve the flavor of those products with local ingredients or unique techniques,” Lafontaine said.
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