US restaurants are feeling squeezed as Americans pull back on booze. A 2025 Gallup poll found that just over half of US adults drink at all, and those who do are consuming less. That's bad news for restaurants, which make their fattest margins on alcohol, not labor-heavy food, the New York Times reports. Research firm Technomic says nearly a third of operators reported "severe declines" in alcohol sales last year. And Canada just recorded its largest annual drop in beer, wine, and spirits sales across 20 years of recordkeeping, per the CBC.
When Damon Wise opened Pineapple Express in Montclair, NJ, he expected alcohol to account for 60% of revenue. Instead, it fell to 30% before he was finally forced to close in January, the Times reports. "It kept coming up in all the meetings, 'What can we do to get people to drink more?'" said Wise, who doesn't drink himself. Fox News describes a similar "bloodbath" in wine country.
Operators blame a mix of economic uncertainty, shifting health attitudes, the aging of hard-partying millennials, and a Gen Z crowd that tends to be "one and done"—if they show up at all, per the Times. "A lot of people are simply not accepting that alcohol is a precondition for having a good time," Carleton University professor Rod Phillips, who studies the history of alcohol, tells the CBC. Looking for a Plan B, some restaurants are finding success with elaborate zero-proof menus, though others say the same work for smaller tabs doesn't pencil out.
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