Dry January: how pubs and bars can keep January busy

Pubs and bars keep January busy by giving the millions of people cutting back a good reason to come in anyway: a proper low and no alcohol menu, food-led offers, events that don't hinge on drinking, and posts that welcome everyone without lecturing anyone. Do your Dry January marketing planning in December, so the menu and the first posts are ready on 1 January.

#How many people do Dry January?

Millions. Alcohol Change UK, the charity that runs the challenge, says 8 million people attempted a full 31 days off alcohol in January 2025, and a further 8.8 million cut down over the month. Those figures come from a Censuswide survey of 2,000 UK adults carried out in February 2025.

For January 2026, the charity published a planning figure. In December 2025 it reported that 17.5 million people, almost one in three (32%), planned a month off alcohol in January 2026. That's how many planned to, and I couldn't find a published figure for how many went on to do it. The number taking part through the charity's own tools (the Try Dry app, daily emails and online communities) is far smaller: 200,000 people globally in 2025, according to the charity's own history of the campaign, which started in 2013 with 4,000.

What does that mean behind the bar? NIQ's Daily Drinks Tracker, which measures managed venues in Britain, found that soft drinks were boosted by Dry January in 2026, with sales up 3.3% in the week to 10 January against overall sales growth of 0.8%. The same report said some people had cut back on visits after resolving to avoid alcohol. My reading is that plenty of people still go out in January and change what they order, so I'd want to be the venue with something good for them to order.

#Build a low and no menu people want to order from

Treat alcohol-free drinks as part of the main drinks list, priced and served with the same care as everything else.

A sensible January line-up for most pubs looks something like this:

• A 0.0% or low alcohol beer, on draught if you can, in good cans or bottles if you can't
• An alcohol-free or de-alcoholised wine or fizz by the glass
• Two or three alcohol-free cocktails made properly, with a garnish and the right glass
• A couple of grown-up soft drinks (a house lemonade, a ginger beer with a bit of bite, a kombucha)
• Decent coffee and tea, because January afternoons are long

Put them on the main menu and on the board, with a short description, where people will see them before they reach the bar. If a guest has to ask "what have you got that's alcohol-free?" and gets a list of mixers, I wouldn't expect to see them again in February. For help writing the descriptions, the guide to launching a new menu covers how to introduce new drinks on social, and the cocktail bar marketing ideas work just as well for alcohol-free cocktails.

#Get the labels right

In England, government guidance sets out what the words mean. The Low Alcohol Descriptors Guidance says "alcohol free" should only be used for a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted if it's no more than 0.05% ABV, "de-alcoholised" covers up to 0.5% ABV, and "low alcohol" means 1.2% ABV or below. For drinks on draught, it says the descriptor should be clear to the customer before or at the point of purchase. That guidance is for England.

The government consulted in 2023 on raising the "alcohol free" threshold to 0.5%, but when I checked the consultation page in October 2026 it still said the responses were being analysed. Until that changes, a 0.5% beer shouldn't be called alcohol-free on your menu or in your posts in England. The simplest fix is to show the ABV next to every low and no drink, everywhere you list it.

#Food-led offers for January

Food gives people a reason to book that has nothing to do with what they're drinking. Money matters too: in Alcohol Change UK's survey ahead of January 2026, saving money was UK drinkers' most common motivation for taking a break from alcohol in January (21%).

A few that suit most pubs:

• A weekday set lunch or a pie night with a soft drink or a 0.0% pint included
• A Sunday roast with family-table bookings pushed on Thursday and Friday
• Veganuary dishes alongside your alcohol-free drinks (the Veganuary charity says at least 1,187 new vegan products and menu items launched for Veganuary 2026)
• Burns Night, which falls on 25 January every year (a Monday in 2027), with haggis, neeps and tatties and an alcohol-free option for the toast

Put a price on every offer in the post. "Pie and a 0.0% pint, £14, Monday to Thursday" is something people can decide on in two seconds, which you can't say for "great food deals all January".

#Events that don't revolve around drinking

Plan January events where it doesn't matter what's in anyone's glass.

Quiz nights are the obvious one, and the guide to promoting pub events covers how to fill them. Board games nights, a run club that finishes at the pub for breakfast or coffee, a craft or book club in the snug, an early evening acoustic set, a coffee morning for parents after the school run: all of these suit drinkers and non-drinkers alike.

Sport helps too. The FA Cup third round is on Saturday 9 January 2027, and the Six Nations starts on Friday 5 February with Ireland v England. A match on the big screen is just as good with a 0.0% pint, and saying so in the post costs nothing.

I'd also make it a rule that no event in January has a drinks minimum. If someone books a quiz table and orders lime and sodas all night, they've still come out, and they'll probably be back in February.

#How to do Dry January marketing without preaching

Talk about what's on the bar and what's on the menu. Leave people's drinking habits, and anyone's health, out of it.

The posts I'd steer clear of are jokes at the expense of people doing Dry January ("enjoy your lime and soda, we'll be on the red"), guilt aimed at people who aren't ("be good this January"), detox language, and apologetic posts that treat alcohol-free drinks as second best. Each of them leaves somebody feeling they're not welcome.

Alcohol Change UK uses Dry January with a registered trade mark symbol on its own pages, and it names official partners for the campaign. So I'd describe your offer in your own words ("alcohol-free menu all January", "six low and no drinks on the bar") and leave their logo and anything that implies you're an official partner well alone. If you want to do something with the charity directly, contact them.

#A sample week of January posts

Here's how a week of posts could look for a community pub in mid-January.

Keep the voice the same as the rest of the year. A January post should sound like your pub, just with different things on the board. If you need a hand with the wording, the guide to Instagram captions for pubs and restaurants has formats that suit offers and events.

If you'd rather plan the month in one go, you can give Venuesmith a sentence like "January: alcohol-free menu, pie night Mondays, quiz Tuesdays, Burns Night on the 25th" and it'll draft a plan of posts for you to edit and approve before anything goes out.

For February onwards, Valentine's Day, Pancake Day and the rest of the year's dates are in the 2027 hospitality marketing calendar.