Oktoberfest to open alcohol-free beer garden

A booze-free beer garden will open in Munich’s Karl-Stützel-Platz area during the build-up to this year’s Oktoberfest celebration in a bid to curb antisocial behaviour.

You know consumer trends are drastically changing when one of the world’s biggest celebrations of beer adds an alcohol-free space in which revellers can drink zer0-alcohol beers.

Called Die Nulle (The Zero), the venue will serve exclusively alcohol-free drinks to visitors during the festival, which is due to take place from 21 September to 6 October. This year marks the 189th iteration of the event.

The decision to open Die Nulle was also partly taken in an attempt to curb antisocial behaviour before and during Oktoberfest, when thousands of beer fans descend on the city of Munich to raise a stein or two… or three. The local administration purposely decided to position the alcohol-free beer garden in the middle of the city so that it would be “anchored in the centre of society.”

One restaurateur said that the influx of boozing tourists during the beer festival had become “pretty disgusting”.

“We don’t want to drive anyone away, but we want to reclaim public space,” said Florian Schönhofer.

“The real problem lies in a certain lack of boundaries in alcohol consumption, which 20 years ago was much more restricted to designated places.”

According to the official Oktoberfest website, beer tents will be open from 9am during the festival, with the last beers poured at 11.30pm. The official price for a litre of beer at the celebration is between €13.60 and €15.30, around 3.87% more expensive than last year, when the price for a litre of beer was €12.60-€14.90.

Last year’s Oktoberfest saw a record number of visitors attend, with some 7.2 million guests turning up to slurp from steins. However, according to the festival’s organisers, while attendance was higher than ever last year, consumption of beer was down with around 6.5 million litres of beer served in 2023, compared with 7.1 million in 2022.

However, the behaviour of drinkers was still deemed problematic enough for a municipal taskforce to be deployed this year in order to direct alcohol-fuelled crowds away from Munich’s railway station and city parks to make them safer during the festival.

Official opening

Die Nulle was opened by Munich city mayor Dieter Reiter on Thursday 18 July and will remain open until the provisional date of 15 September to encourage a peaceful build-up to Oktoberfest.

Guests at the open-air, alcohol-free establishment will be allowed to bring their own food, and there will be free live entertainment provided by bands, choirs and DJs. Soft drinks, mocktails, juices, water and non-alcoholic beers will be on offer to thirsty visitors.

The popularity of alcohol-free beer is soaring with global companies allocating an ever greater share of their spend towards the category. Japanese multinational Asahi has said that by 2040 no and low-alcohol drinks will generate 50% of its sales.

Meanwhile, Athletic Brewing, the biggest non-alcoholic brewery in the US, recently closed a US$50 million equity financing round to drive its long-term growth to “lead further innovation in this dynamic category for years to come.”

Research from the University of Bristol has also indicated that having alcohol-free beers on draught in pubs could help to “improve public health”, with no impact on profit for venues.