Online grocery store Thrive Market has ceased operations and launched non-alcoholic products

The Thrive Market is officially drying up.

The online health and grocery marketplace will become the first major online grocer to remove all alcohol products upon removal Its subscription service. The company plans to replace this entire category with a portfolio of more than 20 brands and 100 products that includes non-alcoholic beer, wine and mocktails.

“It’s time to double down on non-alcoholic products and take a position that’s aligned with the science and where we think attitudes among health and wellness consumers are changing,” Thrive CEO Nick Green told CNBC. “Alcohol is not the future.”

The company said the move reflects changing consumer preferences and the growing popularity of “Dry January,” when people abstain from drinking at the start of the new year. Thrive first entered the wine market seven years ago because it saw an opportunity to “raise health standards in the category,” according to Green, but in recent years has seen the decline of the category as a reason to exit.

“What surprised me was how quickly this transformation happened with alcohol,” Green said. “There’s a complete shift in attitudes, sort of a paradigm shift, in the way alcohol is viewed similarly, frankly, to tobacco where I think smoking was socially acceptable at one time.”

A recent Gallup report found that only 54% of US adults now consume alcohol, one of the lowest levels in decades. Meanwhile, the latest Nielsen Beer Survey data shows that U.S. beer volumes have declined by an average percentage year over year since June.

Bernstein Research said the data confirms a deeper consumer pivot away from traditional beer, especially as drinkers explore everything from ready-to-drink spirits-based cocktails to non-alcoholic alternatives.

““It has become clear that we are seeing a broad-based decline in alcohol consumption in the United States,” Nadine Tharwat, an analyst at Bernstein, said in a recent research note.

Meanwhile, the non-alcoholic beverage sector is booming, with sales expected to reach $5 billion by 2028, according to alcohol data firm IWSR. More brands like AB InBev, Molson Coors and Heineken I entered the market.

Thrive said its own data reflects the national shift as well. Searches for non-alcoholic options on ThriveMarket.com have steadily risen and accelerated over the past three months.

Thrive, a CNBC Disruptor 50 company in both 2024 and 2025, has more than 1.7 million paid members nationwide and generated more than $700 million in sales last year. And since the average shopper carries 15 items in each basket, the company is betting that an increasing share of those items will be alcohol-free.

“People don’t shop at Thrive Market the way they might shop on Amazon, where they order one thing and it ships separately,” Green said. “People are getting big boxes of stuff, and they’re looking to us for their staples similar to what companies like Costco see.”

The company also points to logistics as a motivation for the move. While alcoholic beverages can only be shipped to 39 states, most non-alcoholic beverages can be shipped across the entire United States

“People are basically trading in for a healthier alternative,” Green said. “We can focus on being that place they go to innovate.”