At Dry Spell Bottle Shop in downtown Burien, drink fridges and wooden shelves line the walls. Sun slants through the storefront’s tall windows, illuminating cocktail glasses for sale.
At first glance, Dry Spell could be any other boutique liquor store. But look closer, and you realize: Nothing on these shelves can get you drunk. Everything is non-alcoholic, also known as “zero proof,” or just “NA.”
Ingrid Miller, Dry Spell’s owner and a Burien resident, has been sober for a decade.
“It’s an easy drug to get a little bit dependent on and then a lot dependent on, and it’s just slippery,” she said of alcohol.
When Miller first quit drinking, the NA market was limited. For years, sparkling water replaced her nightly glass of wine. But she was always looking for something more. “You want to participate in the adult ritual,” she said. “You want to be in it, in the party, and a little bit bad, honestly. A juice box at a party doesn’t seem right, right? It doesn’t feel like you’re really celebrating.”
Eventually, Seattle-area grocery stores began to stock NA beer and wine. In 2023, Seattle’s first NA bottle shop, Cheeky and Dry, opened in Phinney Ridge. Tacoma’s Sober AF followed suit last year.
But Miller still had to drive far to find her preferred NA brands. So when she was laid off from her corporate job last November, she decided to curate her own shop closer to home.
Since Dry Spell’s grand opening in March, Miller has met a range of people interested in NA options.
“I kind of expected people like me, who are sober, to be interested,” she said. “I expected people who were trying to get sober to be interested. And I expected people who were maybe on medication or pregnant to be interested. But it’s kind of — everybody is interested.”
Statewide beer and wine sales fell slightly over the past five years, according to the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Dashboard. A national drop in drinking among young people could be at least partly responsible. Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that drinking among 18- to 25-year-olds in the U.S. has declined over the past five years.
Mandy Owens, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute, has been watching this trend. In 2021, about 51% of young adults reported any past drinking, according to Owens. In 2024, that number was down to 47.5%.
“On a population level, that can get kind of big,” Owens said.
Theories about why Gen Z is drinking less range from the rising cost of alcohol to health concerns.
Sunny, 20, is a member of a UW fraternity. (Since Sunny is underage, KNKX is only using his first name.) Alcohol was a big part of his family’s culture until his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Sunny had just started college, and as he and his family moderated their drinking to support his mom, he began to explore NA options.
“I kind of got more interested in the idea of drinking, or looking like you’re drinking without actually consuming the alcohol,” Sunny said.
Some of Sunny’s fraternity brothers have also experimented with non-alcoholic options. Gaelen Lee, 23, likes sparkling water infused with hops.
“It’s actually really delicious, and it kind of satiates the same way beers do, especially after a day of work or outside in the sun for a long time,” Lee said.
Both Lee and Sunny say they haven’t faced peer pressure to drink at UW. Lee thinks his peers’ perceptions of alcohol are catching up with reality: According to National Institute of Health estimates, more Americans die annually from alcohol-related causes than from opioid overdoses.
“I definitely think people are becoming — especially among our age — really mindful of the effects of alcohol,” Lee said. “I know a lot of people are taking breaks, and I know a lot of people who are at least outwardly saying that they’re trying to cut down or just moderate more.”
Gen Z may be leading the NA charge, but it isn’t the only generation that is intrigued. Recently, Judy Jordan, an older Burien resident, poked her head into Dry Spell to get the scoop on NA drinks. Ingrid Miller took Jordan’s skepticism as a personal challenge. She made Jordan an NA Manhattan — “just a baby one,” Miller promised.
Jordan tasted the drink, paused, then made a surprised face.
“That’s sort of pleasant,” she said.
