Southwest Florida’s alcoholic beverage industry has evolved in such a way that an aging industrial strip center in south Fort Myers helps tell the tale. The industry of booze is becoming a snooze for some demographics, as more and more millennials are finding alternatives to alcoholic beverages.
Southwest Florida is positioned to buck some of alcohol’s downward statewide and national trends, though, because the region serves as a vacation destination, is home to an older and growing population and is recovering from multiple major hurricanes — all factors which allow for continued growth of local breweries and distilleries.
Joe Semansky has operated Red Horse Distillery off a Metro Parkway industrial strip center since 2022. Inside, the Ohio transplant distills rum, vodka, whiskey and more in about 2,200 square feet of space. Some of those bottles make their way to Total Wine stores across the region. This year, Semansky unveiled Jungle Joe’s Bamboo spirits, the first line of alcohol in the United States to include bamboo as part of the distilling process.
Amber Cebull, meanwhile, creates a different type of drink designed to be consumed at bars and at leisure. She does so on the opposite side of that same industrial center, fronting the railroad tracks. As Semansky moved to the area and relaunched his brand from Ohio, Cebull stayed in the area and relaunched hers, called Gather Beverage Company. The drinks have the same textures and colors and even similar tastes to their alcoholic counterparts — but without any alcohol in them whatsoever.
The “mocktail” trend, popularized by the millennial generation, has made its way to Southwest Florida. And although local alcohol sales seem to be bucking the national and statewide trends of heading downward, there are signs that these new nonalcoholic beverage trends haven’t just arrived; they’re here to stay.
“Generally, alcohol in the ’90s, everybody was going to drink all the shots and go crazy,” says Rainier DeCastro, a 2002 Gulf Coast High School graduate and general manager of Chartreuse Craft Cocktail Lounge off Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs. “In the early 2000s, things became more intentional: ‘What ingredients are we going to use to make it?’ That was all fine and dandy. A lot less shots. Now, western cultures are sobering up. In the music industry, you can see this. You can see this in pop culture, too; the same thing happens in after-hour venues. People are looking for more of an experience and less of an escape. People aren’t relying on being as intoxicated and instead are having more of an experience. There’re also people wanting to share their experiences on social media as opposed to showing how trashed they were the night before. These trends in culture inform where they put their money.”
Throughout the United States over the past couple of years, less and less money is going toward buying alcohol beverages. Michael Bilello, executive vice president of Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, or WSWA, sent a news release late last year warning industry insiders that the forecast for alcoholic beverage sales in 2025 looked bleak across the country.
“2025 is expected to be another challenging year for the spirits market,” wrote Bilello. “Market participants should be planning now for continued headwinds.”
But while the national trend saw sales dropping by 5.6% in 2024, Florida sales only fell by about 3%, according to WSWA’s data.
“This forecasting model is extremely accurate,” Bilello says. “When we first ran the model in January of last year, this model was almost 90% accurate on what 2024 would do.”
Bilello’s theory as to why alcohol sales have been sagging matches some of DeCastro’s theory.
“There’s a lot of different reasons,” Bilello says. “There’s a lifestyle and choice movement in this country; a lot of generations are just choosing not to drink. But then you look at the rest of the population that does drink.” For those Americans, cost may be a factor, and prices have been rising all over, he points out: “Eggs have gotten a lot of headlines recently. So, people have less discretionary income.”
Overall, though, Bilello believes that “There’s no doubt that wine and spirits are potentially competing for nonalcohol, low alcohol and alternative beverages, which are seeing a pretty big increase.”
Alternatives to alcoholic beverages rise
Gather Beverage began as a corner bar inside Millennial Brewing Company in downtown Fort Myers. After Cebull left the brewery, she decided to resurrect Gather. That effort has been going steadily ever since.
“I started carrying nonalcoholic, different CBD beverages,” Cebull says of how Gather Beverage began. “I saw this opened up this entire market I had never really known. So, I opened the nonalcoholic bar inside the brewery. [But] when I started making the cocktails, they just didn’t have the same complexity of a craft cocktail.”
That lack of nuance got Cebull thinking. What if she could make an Old Fashioned, a popular whiskey drink, without the whiskey? She partnered with a chef to answer the question.
“He was making different cocktail syrups,” she says. They started to work on recipes: “We were making these super-complex drinks, but they were overly complex. There were six to 10 different elements in there.”
They kept the goal of interesting and complex flavors, but simplified the ingredients.
“I wanted to create something that would embody like a concentrate,” Cebull says. “They could make a craft cocktail with healthy wellness ingredients, very simply. That’s where the concept of this got started. It’s very complex, all of our ingredients are fully organic. The process we use is a hybrid between making tea and making beer. It can take anywhere from a week to a month to make it.”
Cebull calls them cocktail refreshers. “They have the flavor complexity of cocktails,” she says. “They’re going into cafes. All the flavors are completely unique. We do a syrup that is a coffee caramel syrup; we originally created it to be like Kahlua.
“Our one problem is our production capacity is so tiny. We have a limited ability to get ourselves out there. But we are slowly scaling.”
When Cebull created her nonalcoholic Old Fashioned, she fell right into the trend of millennials cutting back on alcohol — a trend backed up by WSWA’s SipSource data, that alcohol sales had declined by 5.65% in 2024 from 2023. Sales were projected to decline by about that same percentage entering this summer.
“You can look up the statistics,” Cebull says, “the negative health impacts of alcohol. Starting with the millennial population, alcohol is decreasing. There’s also an awareness of drinking consciously.”
But products such as her own Gather brand are tough to find and tough to get into the mainstream, she said. “When you find a really nice bourbon or a really nice wine, there’s a craftmanship to it,” she says. “That doesn’t exist in the nonalcohol industry right now. It’s very rare.”
Cebull is working to change that.
“We’re going to be launching a craft alcohol-free beverage alliance,” she says. “Everybody’s getting into the game. There’s a lot of brewers that are starting to dabble in nonalcoholic [products].”
Cole Peacock, owner of Caloosahatchee Cannabis Company in Fort Myers, has developed a line of THC-infused seltzers under the brand Pure Native. They cost in the $6 to $8 range for a can.
“We have a full line of products, including cannabis beers,” says Peacock, who also owns Seed & Bean Market in downtown Fort Myers, where he serves the products. “We had several CBD seltzers in place, and they did very well.”
Pure Native ties into the decline in sales of alcohol and rise in sales of alternatives, Peacock said.
“You take the state of Florida, and it’s the second-largest cannabis market in the nation,” he says. “All of our products are approved by the Department of Agriculture. We saw an edge in the marketplace, based on increased sales, what is happening with THC-based sales. We were able to transition very easily.”
Big-box liquor stores in Florida already are selling THC-infused drinks, and Peacock is positioning Pure Native to join them.
“Ten milligrams,” Peacock said, noting Pure Native contains a mild amount of the drug derived from the marijuana plant. “Which is pretty much in line with what the market trends are. Total Wine and ABC, your big-box liquor stores are going in that direction. We fully anticipate being in the big-box stores. We’re in negotiations with them now.”
Pure Native is taking the next step in its evolution, Peacock said.
“We’re going from an online presence and moving to statewide and multistate distribution,” he says. “It’s made here. Manufactured and brewed in the state of Florida.”
The THC-infused drinks have avoided becoming a politically charged flashpoint, Peacock said, and he’s fine with that.
“It’s less about politics and more about getting it regulated the right way,” he says. “All of our products are triple tested. Each product has a QR code that will tell you exactly where it was tested and exactly what the ingredients are. Not every product has that. Not every player in the industry follows those rules.”
Traditional beverage companies still thrive
The more traditional beverage makers — the ones with alcohol in them — in the area said they’re still doing well and navigating through various industry challenges despite a rise in alternative beverages for competition.
“I would have no way to quantify how that has impacted us,” says Rob Whyte, co-founder and co-owner of Fort Myers Brewing Company along with his wife, Jen Whyte. The Whytes can’t quantify a dip, because their sales are trending up, not down.
There’s room for growth in Southwest Florida, as most makers of alcoholic beverages lost significant chunks of their business Sept. 28, 2022, when Hurricane Ian destroyed coastal bars and restaurants. Since then, any year-over-year growth can be attributed to those bars and restaurants resuming business after repairs.
“We’re up, year over year,” Rob Whyte says. “This year’s better than last year. We had the big downturn after Ian.”
The brewery also created a nonbeer product in 2020 when it unveiled Spyk’d, a line of 90-calorie, sugar-free and carb-free seltzers that come in seven flavors: orange, cherry limeade, lemon-lime, strawberry-lime, watermelon, pineapple and mojito.
“White Claw was booming in 2020,” Whyte says of the line that has 100 calories and two grams of sugar. “Ours was unique from everybody else’s, because we didn’t use any artificial sweeteners. Ours is 5% alcohol. We make a great product, and people drink it.”
But, Whyte admitted, the Spyk’d sales aren’t spiking, they’re “static.” His beer sales continue to boom, however, bucking that national trend.
“The younger generation is drinking less than we were when we were younger,” Whyte says. “But generally, in Southwest Florida, there’s a delay from what the rest of the country sees.”
Although the brewery has dabbled in nonbeer endeavors, a nonalcoholic product won’t be one of them, Whyte said. There would be too many complications, including expenses, in making a new product while meeting government regulations. He said he has an awareness of the nonalcoholic beverage trend, but he doesn’t want to follow it.
“I personally don’t understand it,” Whyte says. “If I want something that tastes like beer, I’m drinking beer. And if I want something without alcohol, I’m drinking water.”
JoAnn Elardo, founder of Wicked Dolphin Distillery in 2011-12, agrees with Whyte.
“I’d have to say I’m not really a fan,” Elardo says of nonalcoholic alternatives. “Will they affect the market? Yes. But there’s a lot of things that will affect the market.”
However, Elardo does appreciate the desire to create healthier alcoholic beverages.
“At Wicked Dolphin, we are desperate to do less sugar or no sugar in our rums or our vodka,” she says. “The reason being: A more informed customer is better for us. People are very, very conscious about what’s going into their bodies, and I think that’s important. There’s a lot more things out there that people are using to have that pleasure point.”
Wicked Dolphin became the first distillery in Florida to sell spirits on-site and not through a distributor in July 2013, after Elardo lobbied with the state Legislature for a law change allowing her to do so. And she says she’ll stick to what she knows and not try to branch out into another line of products such as the THC-infused drinks.
“In my opinion, I’m seeing it more as a trend,” Elardo says. “Remember all the seltzer drinks that were coming out? That trend is dying out.”
Plus, she said, sales are going well. “We’re up,” Elardo says. “Thank goodness. Even with three hurricanes last year, we were up from the year before. So, we’re growing, all through the state of Florida and probably nationally. I’m asked to go national at least a couple of times a month. I said, ‘No, no, no, no. I want to keep it in Florida.’
“We’re at capacity. Right now, we’re looking to outfit with new stills and new fermenters. We start our distilling at, say, 5 in the morning. We run until almost 9 o’clock at night. We are just pumping it out. We are just making rum, making rum. We know we need to grow very soon with additional space and equipment. The challenge down here has been time. You know what it is during season — you are working 12 hours a day minimum, just trying to get it done. It’s time for me to start hiring more people.”
Elardo founded Wicked Dolphin with three employees. More than a decade later, she has 26.
Across Lee County, Ryan Bowen’s business is slightly younger at 8 years old. He founded Palm City Brewing with half a dozen employees and since has doubled that workforce. Bowen recently marked the milestone of 1,000 batches brewed.
“Overall, beer that we’re producing is up,” says Bowen, who operates out of 6,000 square feet of space at 7887 Drew Circle, on the south side of Alico Road in south Fort Myers. “We’re actually still growing. We grew by 10% last year. But we’re definitely feeling a shift in consumer trends. Like in our tasting room, we see a lot more people taking beer to go than sitting down for a pint at the bar. We had that consumer who would come in and have a pint and take a four-pack to go. Now, they’re taking two four-packs to go. That’s just an example.”
Some of Palm City’s most popular beers have tied into a trend of less alcohol: Hazify has 6.5% ABV (alcohol by volume), which is lower than the 7% to 8% most IPAs contain. Palm City also brews Suds lager, which at 4.2% compares to lighter American beer. The lower alcohol content means a lower caloric content.
Local breweries are faring well, not saying farewell, Bowen said, and he has a theory as to why.
“You know what I think it is?” Bowen says. “I think it’s local, and people want to support local. That’s always been a thing. We get a lot of people who travel down from other areas, and they want to experience what’s local. Why would people want to come down here and drink a national brand? They can come down here and drink local, straight from the source.
“The other thing we do to stay ahead of the curve: People are drinking a little bit less, so we’re brewing some lighter beers.”
Bilello, executive vice president of WSWA, said it’s refreshing to hear of some local businesses that are accelerating profits and production while their national peers are pumping the brakes.
“There are going to be people bucking the trend,” Bilello says. “There are people who engage with consumers with unique activations and unique markets. People can beat those averages.
“I just came from a big trade show and convention. If someone’s portfolio is flat, that’s considered a win right now in these market conditions. You’ve got people down there [in Florida] telling you their business is doing really well. And that’s great. They should share those best practices with the industry. I can speak to the general conditions of the marketplace, but not everyone is going to be losers.”
Alcohol sales
Year-over-year sales of alcoholic beverages have trended downward overall in Florida.
But the numbers also tell another story: Off-site consumption of alcohol — meaning, people buying it at grocery stores and wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club — is trending upward. Bars and nightclubs, meanwhile, are taking dips in alcohol sales.
Spirits
Total: -3%
Off-site consumption
Total: -0.75%
Liquor store: -1.86%
Grocery: +9.9%
Club/wholesale: +37.47%
Convenience store: +49.63%
Drug store: +4.55%
Mass merchandise: +16.84%
Other off-premises: -7.91%
Military off-premises: –16.85%
On-site purchases
Total: -4.66%
Dining: -4.27%
Bar & Nightclub: -6.79%
Lodging: -3.30%
Recreation: -0.8%
Other on-premises: -4.5%
Transportation: -1.15%
Military on-premises: -45.29%
Wine
Total: -4.88%
Off-site consumption
Total: -4.83%
Liquor store: -2.04%
Grocery: -8.22%
Club/wholesale: -0.67%
Convenience store: -4.83%
Drug store: +3.7%
Mass merchandise: -5.26%
Other off-premises: -34.62%
Military off-premises: -10.2%
On-site purchases
Total: -4.99%
Dining: -6.21%
Bar & Nightclub: -6.45%
Lodging: -3.05%
Recreation: -3.29%
Other on-premises: +4.92%
Transportation: -14.18%
Military on-premises: -13.34%
Source: SipSource/Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America
