How Athletic Sparked the Nonalcoholic Beer Boom With Brews That Don’t Suck
The company that dominates the market wants to change how we experience beer.
Athletic Brewing Co. founders Bill Shufelt and John Walker.
Photographer: Emma Rose Milligan for Bloomberg Businessweek
It began, as no beer startup ever has before, with a few too many virgin piña coladas. In December 2014, Bill Shufelt was 15 months into quitting alcohol. He’d never been a problem drinker—he often woke before 6 a.m. to hit the gym, something no one who harbors a punitive relationship with booze would do. But as a day trader at Point72 Asset Management, the hedge fund founded by New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, he’d found himself drinking at least five nights a week, between business dinners and outings with work friends. “I was just thinking about what kind of husband and father and colleague I wanted to be down the line,” Shufelt recalls. “And I did think alcohol was a ceiling on that.”