Can we think of a better, cooler, more fun descriptor for the range of AF products on offer today than ‘alcohol-free drinks’?

The question occurred to me, following a comment in a newsletter from the always excellent Douglas Watters of the alc-free store Spirited Away/Dry Atlas in New York.

He mentioned that one of his customers was astonished by a sign they had recently seen in Sweden at the checkout of the state’s drinks shop, the Systembolaget (a monopoly).  It asked them whether they regretted buying all the alcohol in their shopping basket, and suggested swapping one of them out for ‘an EANAB’.

This stands for Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverage – a term which was a new one on me (and, indeed, everyone I’ve asked about it) but is apparently sufficiently well know to have its own entry in the Urban Dictionary.

Since a Google search of ‘eanab’ brought up the Edinburgh Airport Noise Advisory Board’ (!) I’m not sure it’s as well-established a term as we might think, though the team at Stanford University who coined it 13 years ago would probably beg to differ.

Two things about this episode struck me. Firstly, that it was great to see a retailer actively prompting customers to consider switching over to AF. This is clearly a country - and a business - that takes its social responsibilities seriously.

A spokesman at the Systembolaget told me that it’s a way of raising awareness of the fact that the retailer’s primary purpose is ‘not to drive additional sales’. The customer, she said, ‘should not feel compelled to buy more than what he/she has in mind.’

A 'regret box' at a Systembolaget store...	... and the 'are you reqlly sure you want this?' prompt for those buying online

It’s a wonderfully grown-up approach to drink and alcohol – but also, she admits, only the kind of attitude that you can have if you’re a government-run body that faces no competition.

In a world where cut-throat supermarkets scrap over every half a percent of market share, something which encourages customers to leave bottles in a ‘regret box’ – whether or not they subsequently replace it with an ‘Eanab’ – is pretty unlikely to be more widely-adopted, sadly.

What's in a name?

The second element was ‘how cool would it be to have a generic name for AF drinks that sums up not just what they aren't (ie alcoholic) but what they are’, which is to say adult, sophisticated and, well... damn good?

I don’t personally like the term ‘mocktails’, and I’m not sure that anyone still uses it. But there’s no doubt that it helped to usher in a more sophisticated approach to bars’ AF offerings.

Might EANAB do the same for AF drinks now?

Or – more intriguingly, given that ‘equally attractive’ rather undersells a lot of the drinks being created now – can we think of a better acronym?

Something that we start using and seed into general use. Something that rolls off the tongue with a bit of snap and panache, just like the drinks themselves; that we’d like to see adopted by the wider public.

Maybe something like QAFA (Quality Alcohol-Free Alternative) or CADONA (Crafted Adult Drink with No Alcohol).

I’m sure the combined brain power of the AF community can come up with better alternatives. So feel free to send over your suggestions. We could put the favourites to a vote and start using the winner.