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The Big Interview: Laura Willoughby MBE
Laura Willoughby MBE isn’t one to do things by halves – unless we’re talking ABV, as Eloise Feilden finds out at no- and low-alcohol retailer Club Soda in London’s Covent Garden.
“I’M REALLY good at working really hard for no money,” quips Laura Willoughby MBE, former councillor and founder of no- and low-alcohol drinks specialist Club Soda. “It’s my speciality. That’s why I was in politics. Particularly Lib Dem: you work really hard to realise the speed humps around your ward have got more votes than you do.”
Jokes aside, Willoughby’s past life in politics has left her surprisingly wellequipped for a second career as a retailer.
Willoughby stood for Parliament twice as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Islington North in 2001 and 2005, competing against Labour ’s Jeremy Corbyn. She was awarded an MBE for services to the community in 2004, aged only 30; an achievement she’s “still wondering what to do with”, according to her LinkedIn page.
Almost two decades later, and on a completely new career trajectory, she’s still using her skills in campaigning to kickstart the alcohol-free movement. “Club Soda is an equalities campaign at the bottom line, and I’ve been an equality campaigner since I was 14,” she says.
Her first campaign was for a skateboard ramp in her local town (no, she admits, she has never been a skateboarder), and decades on she’s using her skills to bring the concept of ‘mindful drinking’ to the masses.
Willoughby raised £30,000 to help launch Club Soda as a permanent independent retailer in 2022, following the success of its pop-up store in January of the same year. “I always said that we were never going to sell drinks, so I’m doing really well,” she says.
Club Soda began life as a health tech business, assisting people interested in altering their drinking habits through behaviour change – the concept at the outset was to create “Weight Watchers, but with booze”, but has evolved since then.
“I never thought I wanted to sell the drinks directly. I’m not a retailer, I’m not a bar owner. It completely scared me,” Willoughby says. “When we were setting up here, I told people we were creating a shop with some ‘drink-on space’ because I didn’t like to use the word ‘bar ’. That’s how much it frightened me.”
Club Soda’s tasting room is not a typical bar, either. Only wines with an alcohol content of 0.5% or lower appear on the list, and for beers, the only brew with a higher ABV, Beavertown’s Nanobot Super Session IPA at 2.8%, is highlighted on the menu in pink.
Club Soda’s bar also offers a range of “adult soft drinks”, from tonic water and ginger ale to a CBD-infused cream soda and a bottle of organic ginger-andchipotle soda. Willoughby is keen to drive perceptions of alcohol-free drinks far away from the concept of sitting in the corner of a pub slowly sipping on a glass of flat Coca-Cola.
“We need nice tasty drinks instead of J2O or half a pint of Coke, because I’m not 12,” she says. “I always say when I go out: my money is as good as anyone else’s; why don’t you want it? I’m happy to spend as much money as people who drink – you just have to give me the things to spend the money on.”
Willoughby characterises our current culture as an “experience economy”, explaining: “It’s why everywhere serves food now. Who would have thought there would be bars set up just to do axe throwing or clay pigeon shooting?”
Our social habits are changing, she says. “We want to be able to laugh and we want to be able to feel like it’s quality time, and that’s across all generations.” Having choices when it comes to drinking feeds directly into this.
Online searches involving the word ‘mocktail’ are up 42%, according to research by Club Soda in collaboration with global market research business The Mix, suggesting that consumers are looking for ways to drink less without sacrificing experience.
According to IWSR figures, no- and low-alcohol sales in the world’s 10 leading markets surpassed US$11bn in 2022, with volumes poised to grow at a CAGR of +7% between 2022 and 2026.
As a relatively new player in what is a huge global industry, no and low is yet to fully find its feet in the alcohol sector. Framing itself as an ‘alternative’ to drinking inherently drives a wedge between the category and its alcoholic adversaries, but Willoughby is not one to shy away from conflict. “I would personally love to be a threat to everybody,” she says. “It’s quite a fun place to be.”
Club Soda’s location on Drury Lane faces directly onto the Greene King pub in which Willoughby had her last alcoholic drink 11 years ago. “It’s very funny that we’ve ended up here,” she says, but all these years later she is unfazed by the pub’s presence. “I think they could improve their alcohol-free range. I tell Greene King that quite a lot,” she shrugs.
But Willoughby is not motivated by conflict for conflict’s sake. Ultimately, the business is viable thanks to a shift in consumer behaviour.
Non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits made US$395m in US off-premise sales over the 52 weeks to 20 August 2022, up by one-fifth, according to the NielsenIQ Scan Off Premise Channels.
Tee-totallers are only a small part of the story. Regular alcohol drinkers who are curious about the category, and looking to moderate, make up the majority of no- and lowalcohol sales. According to the IWSR Global No-and Low-Alcohol Strategic Study 2022, 82% of no and low buyers also regularly consume alcohol, typically alternating between non-alcoholic, lower-ABV and full-strength drinks during the same occasion.
“Low’s time is yet to come,” Willoughby predicts. The low-alcohol offering in Club Soda remains a very small percentage, but the company’s founder is still keen to be part of the conversation around a category she believes is yet to have its time in the sun.
“We have a small shelf of low-alcohol products, because we’re committed to the fact that mindful drinking is about what you drink when you are drinking just as much as when you’re not,” she says. “It’s the beginning of that part of the discussion, and there will be a time where we’ll see lower-ABV spirits and lower-ABV cocktails on menus, as well as more table beers around.”
What poses a challenge to the success of low-alcohol products is the “binary” attitude we have to drinking. “The consumer is either drinking or not drinking. Working out ABV is hard for bartenders, let alone the consumer.”
Despite the challenges posed by no and low, brands are being urged to keep up with this burgeoning trend.
“Either the alcohol industry needs to learn to adapt and realise that they’re very good at making, marketing and distributing drinks of all kinds, or they decide that their future is only in alcohol,” Willoughby says with some confidence. “Either of those may be possible, but the consumer is demanding something different.”
The former politician’s goal is clear: “All I want is that, wherever alcohol is sold, there should be alcohol-free options that are just as good.”
What is more, she’s willing to do almost anything to achieve this. “I’m happy to put myself out of business in the long run,” she laughs, putting her head in her hands.
“My goal isn’t to create a chain of alcohol-free bars. In fact, it’s far from it. My aim is to have hundreds and hundreds of bars that have good alcohol-free options, so that everybody feels welcome in every single venue.”
Club Soda is looking to expand into other UK cities, starting in Manchester in early 2024, following an investment round taking place now, with sights set on Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff in due course. Willoughby is keen to work with local brands and expand the ‘mindful drinking’ movement, but commercial success is low on the list of her priorities.
“I cannot tell you how much you can get done when it doesn’t matter who takes the credit, and when you bring people to collaborate together to make it all happen,” she says.
“It’s a stupid way to run a business,” she acknowledges – in that giving advice to other retailers competing for sales tends to limit your own. “It’s why I’m poor,” she shrugs, smiling – evidence yet again of the heights Willoughby will go to in order to achieve her mission – “but that’s okay.”
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