Bali's missing drink is for the person who isn't drinking

We looked at whether a premium non-alcoholic drink could work in Bali, and tried to separate a real opportunity from a fashionable one. Our reading is that there is a real opening, but a narrow one, and that most people would aim at the wrong product and the wrong customer. Non-alcoholic beer is the wrong way in. A confident, well-made non-alcoholic drink that a person can hold in the evening, while everyone else is drinking, without feeling that they are being punished, is the unmet need. The drink itself is not hard to make. The difficulty, and most of the cost, is in positioning, distribution and marketing. For that reason this is a better move for an existing drinks producer adding a line than for a newcomer betting on a single product.

A symbol, and a contradiction

Bintang is more than the best-selling beer in Bali. The red star has become a souvenir, a singlet, a shorthand for the island itself. It is also cheap, at around 30,000 rupiah in a shop and from about 35,000 in a restaurant, which is part of its appeal. For most visitors, the default drink is chosen before they arrive.

Set against this is the other thing Bali sells, harder than almost anywhere else in the region: wellness. Yoga, longevity, clean eating, the morning swim, the retreat. Two pictures of the same island sit side by side and do not quite fit together. The space between them is the subject of this piece.

The global market for drinks without alcohol has grown quickly, and the question for any operator or investor here is simple. Is that growth arriving in Bali in a form worth building for, or is it a Western habit that stops at the airport? Our answer is that it is arriving, but not as the product most people would first reach for, and not for the customer most people would first picture.

The unmet need is a drink you can hold in the evening, while everyone else is drinking, without feeling you are being punished for it.

The global shift, and its limits

The evidence that this is a lasting change rather than a passing trend is now reasonably strong.

• The global non-alcoholic beer market was worth somewhere in the low to mid 20 billion US dollars in 2025. Most forecasts cluster around 7 to 8% annual growth and a market of roughly 31 billion dollars by 2030, with some estimates reaching into the mid 30s by the early 2030s. The wide spread between research firms is itself a sign of a category still being defined.¹
• In the United States, the Brewers Association reports that non-alcoholic beer reached about 2.5% of beer volume in 2025, more than double its 1.1% share in 2021.² In bars and restaurants the growth has been faster still, with CGA by NIQ data showing non-alcoholic beer growing by roughly a third year on year in 2024.³
• The driver is moderation, led by younger drinkers. A 2025 Circana study across six European markets found that 71% of consumers reported buying, stocking or drinking less alcohol.⁴ In the United States, Gallup recorded the share of adults who drink falling from the low 60s to 54%, the lowest in its long-running survey.⁵

Two cautions keep this honest. First, non-alcoholic beer is only one part of a wider move toward drinks that do a job beyond refreshment, a group that also includes functional sodas, botanical aperitifs and herbal tonics. Second, the strong growth rates sit on small bases. Even in its best markets, non-alcoholic beer is still a single-digit share of all beer, and some analysts have begun to ask whether mature markets are nearing their ceiling. For a market as young as Bali's this is not a pressing worry, but it argues for treating non-alcoholic beer as one product within a plan, rather than the plan itself.

Why non-alcoholic beer is the wrong way in

It is tempting to assume the global non-alcoholic beer wave will simply wash into Bali. The local evidence suggests it will not, for three reasons.

The entry-level position is already taken, and already judged. Bintang Zero has been on the Indonesian market since around 2005, which is more than twenty years.⁶ That long presence matters. This is not a young product still searching for its audience. The market has had two decades to decide what Bintang Zero is, and the verdict is settled. In practice it is not sold or drunk as a beer. It sits in convenience-store fridges at around 10,000 rupiah, cheaper than the alcoholic version, next to Coca-Cola and the local fizzy drinks. It rarely appears on a restaurant menu. Its real competitive set is soft drinks. The lesson is that the cheap zero-alcohol "beer" slot has already been filled, by the country's largest brewer, and the customer has filed it under carbonated soft drink.

Beer drinkers do not accept it as a substitute. People who drink, or used to drink, beer know the taste they want. A non-alcoholic lager rarely delivers it, and given the choice they tend to reach for a soft drink rather than a copy that satisfies no one. The product falls between two stools. It is not a beer to the beer drinker, and it carries no real appeal to the health-minded customer either. This is the central weakness of leading with non-alcoholic beer here.

Halal certification is a point to handle, not a barrier. It is worth being clear about, because it shapes one decision, but it does not stop a new entrant. The Indonesian position is specific. The religious objection attaches to the word "beer," which refers to khamr, and to the brewing process, not to non-alcoholic drinks in general. Under the relevant MUI ruling, a product named as a beer cannot be certified halal even at zero alcohol.⁷ A drink named and made as a botanical or malt soft drink sits in a different category. The practical effects are mild:

• For the realistic target market in Bali, which is foreign visitors, expatriates and Hindu Balinese, halal certification matters little, because the reason these customers buy is wellness, not religion.
• Many Muslims in Bali are relaxed about this in any case.
• If a brand later wants to reach the wider Indonesian Muslim market, the route is well understood: build and name the drink as a botanical or functional product rather than a beer, and certification becomes possible.

The only real constraint is on one choice. A drink branded as "beer" closes off both halal certification and the Muslim customer's comfort. So it should not be branded as beer, which points toward the better product in any case.

The Gulf states have shown how this is done, over forty years. There, the established non-alcoholic malt drinks such as Barbican and Moussy succeeded by detaching themselves from beer entirely. Trade analysis of that market is blunt that the "sophisticated adult soft drink" framing is what wins Muslim consumers, while products that present as beer struggle. The advice given to manufacturers is to lead with fruit flavours rather than a bitter lager, because the local palate prefers flavour to bitterness, and to remember that the real competitor is Coca-Cola, not Budweiser. Barbican holds halal certification in several places, including a 2011 ruling by Malaysia's National Fatwa Council.⁸ The lesson carries directly to Bali: the winning product is not a beer with the alcohol taken out, but a drink that stands on its own terms.

Where the real opening is

This is the heart of the argument, and it needs to be put carefully, because the obvious version of it is wrong.

It would be easy to claim that Bali has no good non-alcoholic drinks and that the field is open. That is not true. The island is one of the most crowded wellness-drink markets in the region. Fresh coconuts sell for one or two dollars on almost every corner. Cafes across Canggu and Ubud make their own kombucha, cold-pressed juice, ginger shots and jamu, the traditional turmeric and tamarind tonic. Anyone entering with a packaged premium drink has to be honest that these are the real competitors, not Bintang.

But look closely at when and why those drinks are consumed, and the gap appears.

• Coconut water is a daytime drink. People order it by the pool, after exercise, in the heat. They do not order a coconut at a bar in the evening while the table is socialising.
• Jamu is a health drink, taken as a small shot, for a purpose. Nobody drinks jamu at a party. It is not designed for that, and it does not feel right there.
• Kombucha is closer, and it is everywhere, but it is rarely positioned as a premium social drink. The price can be high, but the positioning is health-shelf, not the thing you are pleased to be seen holding at dinner.

So the existing options serve the morning and the middle of the day, and they serve health. What none of them serves is the evening social occasion for the person who is not drinking alcohol. At that moment, in a bar or a restaurant or at a party, the non-drinker's choices are water, a sugary soft drink, or a mocktail that the kitchen makes inconsistently and that still reads as a consolation prize. The unmet need is a drink that this person can hold, in that setting, without feeling, or looking, as though they are being punished for not drinking.

This reframes the competition in a useful way. The product is not really competing for a particular time of day. It is competing for a particular kind of customer. During the day it stands beside coconut and kombucha; in the evening it takes the place of the beer or the cocktail. The same customer is likely to reach for it at both ends of the day once they like the taste. The aim is to win over the person, not to own a time slot.

Who that person is matters, and it is not everyone. The honest objection to this whole idea is that people behave differently on holiday. Someone who moderates carefully at home may drink freely in Bali, because the trip is the escape. Bali's largest group of visitors, Australians, leans price-sensitive and toward a drinking culture. All of this is true, and it rules out the mass tourist market. It does not rule out the opportunity, because the target was never the average tourist. The target is the segment that does not want to drink, for health, for recovery, for pregnancy, for religion, for sport the next morning, or simply by choice, plus the larger group who would happily drink less if a good alternative existed and who currently default to alcohol only because the alternative is water. If the global move toward drinking less is real, and the evidence says it is, then a version of it is present in Bali too, concentrated in exactly the wellness, yoga, longevity and digital-nomad communities the island has gathered. The task is not to convert the beer drinker. It is to serve the person who has already decided, and to make that choice feel good rather than second-best.

The product

This points away from non-alcoholic beer and toward a clear product. In plain terms, the strongest fit is a premium non-alcoholic sparkling drink, somewhere between an aperitif and a sophisticated soda, built on Balinese and Indonesian botanicals such as lemongrass, ginger, kaffir lime, tamarind, hibiscus, butterfly pea and local citrus. It should be dry rather than sweet, complex enough to feel adult, and presented so that it looks like it belongs in a good glass at a good table. Made locally from local ingredients, it avoids import duties and the cold-chain problems of a shipped product, and it can sit at a price near a fresh juice or a kombucha rather than far above it.

A point that matters for anyone weighing the investment: this drink is not difficult to make. The production is close to making kombucha or a soft drink, and it does not need the costly de-alcoholisation equipment that a real non-alcoholic beer requires. Any medium or large producer already making drinks could develop a recipe and bottle it without much trouble. The barrier to entry on the production side is low. That is precisely why the contest is not in the factory. It is in the brand, the distribution and the marketing, which is where almost all of the effort and the budget should go.

We would avoid two things. The first is dealcoholised beer, for the reasons above. The second is loading the drink with fashionable functional ingredients, which leads to the regulatory point below.

A note on regulation

Beyond halal, there is a classification risk worth designing around from the start. Indonesia's food and drug authority, BPOM, draws a line between food and medicine. Some of the functional ingredients that are popular in Western wellness drinks, such as certain adaptogens, nootropics or mushroom extracts, may be treated as traditional medicine rather than as food and drink.¹² If that happens, the product can be blocked from ordinary shops and venues, and the registration becomes slow and expensive. The sensible response is to keep the formulation clearly within food-grade botanical ingredients, and to treat any functional or health claim as a marketing and regulatory question to be checked before launch, not assumed. A clean botanical recipe is both easier to register and easier to defend. This is a reason to keep the product simple, not a reason to abandon it.

Marketing and going to market

For a drink in a new category, marketing is not a supporting task. It is most of the business. An existing producer can create the recipe easily; whether the brand succeeds will be decided by how it is positioned, who it targets, how it is distributed and how it is talked about. This section therefore carries more weight than the rest, and draws on the brands that have built this category elsewhere.

Position on identity, not on absence. The most important lesson from the category leaders is that they never sell the drink as the lack of alcohol. Athletic Brewing, which built the modern non-alcoholic beer category in the United States, talks about enjoyment, community and an active life, and is open that most of its drinkers also drink alcohol, treating the product as a choice for the moments they would rather not.⁹ Heineken's recent "0.0 Reasons Needed" campaign works the same problem from the other side, removing the social pressure to explain why you are not drinking.¹⁰ In Bali the equivalent is to sell the identity the island already trades on, of health, energy and the good morning after, and to avoid any suggestion that the customer is missing out by choosing it.

Price it like an adult drink, not a cheap substitute. Athletic kept its price alongside craft beer rather than discounting into the soft-drinks aisle, which both protected its margins and signalled that the product deserved respect. A drink priced as a cheap stand-in will be treated as one. Bintang Zero is the warning here.

Make the packaging worth holding and worth sharing. Because this is a new category, it is reasonable, not contrived, to build a following around it. Two examples are worth studying. Liquid Death turned plain water into a sought-after brand almost entirely through bold, instantly recognisable packaging and a sense of belonging.¹³ Olipop, a soft drink, was lifted by customers pouring it into wine glasses and starting a trend on social media, which the company then encouraged.¹⁴ The lesson for Bali, where so much runs on images shared online, is that the bottle or can has to be something a customer is happy to be photographed holding. Good packaging is itself a marketing channel.

Sponsor the events where the audience gathers. Athletic built its early brand by handing out cans at the finish lines of road races and fitness events, on the view that connection beats advertising. Bali suits this unusually well, with a steady calendar of running events, surf contests, cycling, triathlons, and yoga and wellness festivals. At the top of the market, Corona chose its non-alcoholic brand, Corona Cero, to sponsor the Paris 2024 Olympics rather than its alcoholic one, which shows where serious money now sees the future.¹¹ A new brand should be present, pouring and sampling, at the events its customers already attend.

Build a list of the right voices, and consider a name. The audience here follows particular people: yoga teachers, longevity and fitness figures, chefs, surfers, and the wellness-travel accounts that decide where visitors go. The brand should identify the voices that truly reach its customers and work with them in a way that feels real rather than paid and forgotten. A credible celebrity or well-known local partner, of the kind already attached to brands like De Soi and Kin in the United States, can give a new drink standing quickly, provided the association is honest.

Tell a story that speaks to more than one customer at once. A single brand story can carry several appeals without contradiction:

• For the health-minded customer, the ingredients and the absence of alcohol and excess sugar.
• For the social customer, a drink that holds its own at the table and in the evening.
• For the trend-minded customer, packaging and a look worth posting and sharing.
• For the wellness community, visible support of the sport and yoga events they take part in.

Arm the trade properly. This is a business of placement, and the venue is the front line. The brand should approach gyms, wellness centres, retreats, health-food stores, cafes, restaurants and beach clubs in person, with a proper kit: printed menus and inserts, table material, branded glassware, clear serving suggestions and fair supply terms that make the product easy to stock and easy to pour. Two arguments open those doors. The first is that the drink reaches places alcohol cannot, such as the gym, the yoga studio and the daytime cafe. The second is that, for venues that do serve alcohol, the on-premise pattern in mature markets is encouraging: non-alcoholic options are growing much faster than the rest of the drinks list and tend to add to the occasion by keeping the non-drinker at the table, rather than replacing alcohol sales.

Choose the channel order with care. The likely sequence is to start in premium wellness venues, boutique hotels, yoga studios, coworking spaces and high-end cafes, where the audience is dense and the positioning is set, and only later move into supermarkets and convenience stores. Many premium drinks brands begin in hospitality and earn their way onto retail shelves afterwards.

Avoid the old clinical tone. The failed non-alcoholic products of the past leaned on joyless, functional, health-lecture messaging. The modern winners are warm, social and confident, and do not over-label themselves as "alcohol-free" or push health claims too hard. The wellness association should be felt through the product and the setting, not delivered as a lecture.

Plan a launch worth writing about. The category has a record of small, inexpensive ideas that travelled far: a non-alcoholic advent calendar for Dry January that sold out and drew coverage, a full-page newspaper advertisement timed to the day most people abandon their resolutions, dedicated alcohol-free pop-up bars, and stocked-fridge giveaways. A new brand launching a new category in Bali has a natural story, and should design a launch moment built to be reported, not only advertised.