Booze-free bar closes as proprietor hits out at boozy Brits after lacking one factor

Boozy Brits have been blasted by the owner of an alcohol-free bar as he closed its doors for the last time.

The owner of a Manchester-based booze-free bar, the city’s first, has called time on service at Love From, and claimed that the UK needs a “mindset change”. After a successful trial opening last year, the bar opened in earnest in January of this year, but underestimating one staple of the British collective psyche seems to have caused chaos for the innovative venue.

With booze-free pints for £6 and non-alcoholic cocktails for £7.50, Love From’s ambition had been to “redefine perceptions that you need booze to have a good time”. But, as happens every year, when the sun comes out, so does Brits’ rampant desire for boozing.

READ MORE: Wetherspoon’s boss Tim Martin nets extra £10m – and it’s got nothing to do with pint prices

Click for more of the latest news from across the world from the Daily Star.

Now it seems that mission has fallen short, with the bar’s owner, Karl Considine, 39, stating last month that a combination of the “financial situation” of the business itself and the City Centre’s “wildly competitive” bar sector meaning it was time to bring things to an end.

Footfall dropped after the initial opening in January, likely buoyed by the masses of Brits who threw themselves into sobriety in dry January. But as the booze began to flow again later in the year, the footfall into Love From started to dry up.

As per a Times report Considine, who has been sober for three years, said: “A lot of people do dry Jan and end up going for longer because when you go alcohol-free for a month it’s enough time to notice all the massive benefits.

“But what we noticed was as the warmer weather came the behaviour is more to drink than go alcohol-free. During [the Euros] most bars around us were packed and we were dead.”

But while the business was eager to tap into a ‘sober-curios’ market in Gen Z and booze-free bars have had more luck in London and Brighton, the Manchester edition, there wasn’t enough footfall to keep Love From afloat.

Considine added: “There’s a contradiction in what has happened to us. So many people have been shocked. So many people have been like ‘oh but everyone’s alcohol-free now’.”

He added that the business had become a target for abuse online, adding “We were getting things like ‘he’ll be opening a vegan butcher’s next’ which I thought was quite funny,” he said. “It just shows how preposterous going alcohol-free would seem to some. A mindset change is needed.”

He is now turning his attention to weddings, gigs and pop-ups.

For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters