Moving alcohol-free drinks to the top of the menu cut drinking without changing a single price or product

the problem

Bars and restaurants that want to encourage lower-alcohol choices default to changing what's on offer or what it costs, treating the drinks list itself as neutral packaging rather than something that shapes the choice — while alcohol-free and low-alcohol options are conventionally listed at the bottom of a menu or in their own separate section, as an afterthought to the 'real' drinks

background

what everyone would do

The standard public-health lever for reducing alcohol consumption was to work on price, through taxes or minimum unit pricing, or availability, through licensing hours or outlet density, treating the menu listing itself as neutral packaging that had nothing to do with what customers actually chose to order.

what they saw

The Behavioural Insights Team saw that alcohol-free and low-alcohol options had already grown widely available, meaning the problem wasn't a lack of choice but that those options sat at the bottom of a menu or in a separate section, positions easy to overlook even for customers genuinely open to ordering one. Rather than changing what was for sale or what it cost, the fix was reordering an unchanged drinks list so the alcohol-free option appeared first, requiring customers to actively scroll past it to reach stronger drinks rather than needing to seek it out.

the move

By changing only the ordering of items on an unchanged drinks list — not the products, not the prices, not staff behavior — the trial isolated menu position itself as an independent lever on what people drink. Placing NoLo options at the top of each section made customers actively pass over the alcohol-free choice before reaching stronger drinks, rather than needing to seek it out at the bottom or in a separate list.

why it works

Moving NoLo options to the top of each drinks section meant customers encountered the lower-alcohol choice before the higher-alcohol ones, exploiting the same tendency to default toward whatever's presented first that shapes choice in menus, forms and lists generally, without changing a single product or price a customer could object to or even necessarily notice. Because the change touched only ordering, not products, prices, or staff behavior, it isolated menu position as an independent behavioral lever, and its results proved it: the UK trial cut alcohol ordered by 15% and made customers 30% more likely to order at least one alcohol-free drink, with average spend per order holding steady across all three countries, meaning the intervention reduced consumption without costing the venue any revenue. Because the fix required no new regulation, pricing intervention, or product reformulation, any bar or restaurant could adopt it unilaterally at zero implementation cost, making the ratio of effect to effort about as favorable as a public-health intervention can be.

the payoff

In the UK, the top-placement version cut the amount of alcohol ordered by 15% and made participants 30% more likely to order at least one alcohol-free or low-alcohol drink, with similar reductions in Germany and a larger effect in Mexico; critically, average spend per order held steady across all three countries, meaning the change reduced alcohol consumption without reducing what customers paid.

where it breaks

The mechanism depends on the preferred option genuinely already existing in the lineup at comparable quality and price, since reordering a menu can only redirect choice among options actually available — a venue with no appealing alcohol-free option to begin with would have nothing worth surfacing to the top regardless of menu layout. It also depends on customers actually reading the menu in the order it's presented rather than searching directly for a specific known item, meaning the effect works best on undecided or open-minded customers browsing options rather than someone who already knows exactly what they intend to order. And the technique's effect could erode with repeated, obvious exposure if customers begin actively looking past a now-familiar top-placed nudge, or if it becomes such an established, expected practice across venues that it stops functioning as a genuine default and instead becomes just another category customers learn to scan past, a risk any positional nudge invites as it becomes more widely adopted and recognized.

what came after

BIT is now seeking hospitality partners to run the same top-of-menu placement as an in-venue pilot at scale, positioning menu layout — a zero-cost design change any bar or restaurant can make unilaterally — as a public-health lever that doesn't require new regulation, pricing intervention, or product reformulation to work.

references

1. [1]Institute of Alcohol Studies — Applying behavioural insights to cut alcohol with no- and low-alcohol drinksInstitute of Alcohol Studies, 2026ias.org.uk
2. [2]Behavioural Insights Team — The Alcohol Substitution PlaybookBehavioural Insights Team, 2026bi.team

keep it

same kind of clever

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