Why do bar’s charge so much for non alcoholic drinks?
The alcohol manufacturers know full well that a non-drinker is going to have one or two drinks, maximum!
However, they also know that even if a drinker only intends to have one drink, the drug will blow all their good intentions out of the water within minutes of the first sip.
I can understand it from both sides of the bar. Quite often when I am with friends in a pub I will have a couple of glasses of tonic water.
By the time it gets to the third round of drinks and I am asked what I want. The answer I normally give is ‘nothing I am not thirsty’. Non-drinkers only really drink to appease their thirst and then they stop.
Order a non alcoholic drink and you will get shafted
Drinkers, however, are not downing pint after pint of liquid because they are thirsty. This is perhaps why teetotalers are treated with such passive-aggressive contempt by bars, pubs, and restaurants around the world.
The other thing about soft drinks and water is it’s hard to upsell a customer to a better brand. Drinkers will occasionally treat themselves to an expensive bottle of wine or buy a $100 bottle of champagne to impress their dinner guests.
You would struggle to impress anyone by asking the waiter to bring you the finest bottle of Coca-Cola they have.
Most restaurants don’t make a profit on the food they serve. It is the overpriced booze served by the snooty wine Semillon that generates the profit.
So imagine how the restaurant owner feels when he realizes he has a table full of non-drinkers! They know that drinkers won’t just have one drink.
Plus when you also play on the laziness of drinkers you have a table full of ATM’s.
I learned a very expensive lesson onboard a cruise ship once.
My friend Geoff and I were working at a radio station in the North West of England.
The station had arranged a listener trip aboard the famous Queen Elizabeth II cruise liner. Geoff and I were encouraged to get as many listeners as possible signed up. We were informed that if we sold 50 places on the ship we could both go for free.
We ended up selling 70 tickets and were very happy to have a drunken week away on board the most luxurious cruise ship in the world.
It was the most pampered and looked after I have ever felt.
No cash required, sir!
You don’t need cash on board; you only need to vaguely look like you want something and a waiter is by your side within seconds. Any drink you want is never more than thirty seconds away.
Even money is delivered when you want it! If you want a couple of hundred dollars in casino chips to play roulette, just put your hand in the air and they will be in your possession before you can say ‘just sign here sir’.
Honestly, I felt like James Bond. I was wearing a tux and drinking gallons of the very best Martini (shaken not stirred).
However, just like alcohol, this whole 007 lifestyle was just an illusion. At the end of the vacation as the ship was returning to dock in Southampton. I had to stagger, with a crazy bad hangover to the purser’s office to pay my bill.
I reached for the credit card in pure shame as I was presented with a bar and casino bill of over $3000.
At the time that was a significant amount of money and certainly something that I was going to have to keep secret from my wife.
Drinkers get treated like Kings & Queens
The cruise liner had treated me like a king and then billed me like a king. All because they know that drinkers will keep drinking, especially if you make it super easy for them.
Alcohol is such a devious drug that the very first thing it does is interfere with the part of the brain responsible for making sound decisions. This is why us ‘problem drinkers’ have such a hard time just having one drink.
Think about that for a moment, it is very much how wars are fought. When two armies attack each other, one of the first objectives is to disable the defences of the opposing army.
Know your enemy
To beat alcohol and get it out of your life, you have to know your enemy.
Alcohol is not playing fair; it’s attacking you and at the same time pretending to be your friends. While you are busy watching the theatre and drama that I described above, this insidious drug is working towards its only goal.
Alcohol is not your friend; it is your worst enemy. It has only one goal – to kill you and it will not stop until it achieves that outcome.
Ready to join the people who only drink because they are thirsty? Click here to find out how to quit drinking today.
