How Athletic Brewing Sells Beer for a Post-Alcohol Generation

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Bill Shufelt left Wall Street to make non-alcoholic beer, most people thought he was crazy. At the time, the category made up less than 1% of U.S. beer sales and was widely seen as a joke. But nearly a decade later, Shufelt’s company Athletic Brewing is at the center of a major cultural shift around health and wellness. On this episode of Bold Names, he joins Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins to talk about the rise of non-alcoholic beer, how his company is navigating President Trump’s tariffs, and why beer giants like Heineken and Guinness are now chasing the category he helped create. To watch the video version of this episode, visit our WSJ Podcasts YouTube channel or the video page of WSJ.com. Check Out Past Episodes: How Corning Is Using Trump’s Tariffs To Its Advantage The Boldest Ideas of 2025 — And What’s in Store for 2026 McLaren CEO Zak Brown On F1 And Business Strategy At 200 Miles Per Hour How Tubi Is Coming for Netflix and YouTube in the New Streaming Wars Let us know what you think of the show. Email us at BoldNames@wsj.com. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Read Christopher Mims’s Keywords column. Read Tim Higgins’s column. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, just leave and work now. Sorry, it's a bit loud.
0:03.4	Um, basically, so I was thinking we could get Macies tonight.
0:05.7	Had a big Mac on my mind all day, and delivery fee on the app is now from 99P.
0:09.8	So you win?
0:11.0	Of course you are.
0:11.5	Love you. Bye.
0:14.6	Exclusively on the McDonald's app 18 plus service fee and small order fee may apply
0:17.9	Participating restaurants serving times and teas and seas apply
0:20.0	It was just so obvious to me that there was an unmet need in the world
0:23.4	You know, I was evidence of that Service fee and small order fee may apply. Participating restaurants. Serving times and teas and seas apply. It was just so obvious to me that there was an unmet need in the world.
0:23.6	You know, I was evidence of that.
0:25.1	I started to voice that to my wife and friends.
0:27.8	So you were like, I want beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
0:30.7	How can we make this happen?
0:32.5	Yeah.
0:45.1	This week on Bold Names, we've got Bill Shufelt, the CEO and the co-founder of Athletic Brewing.
0:50.9	For those of you who don't know, Athletic is a non-alcoholic beer maker, which makes my 10 a.m. beer drinking that much more respectable.
0:53.2	For the record, I already respected your 10 a.m. beer drinking. Bill is going to talk to us about Gen Z and their drinking habits, or lack thereof. He's going to talk about the future of the whole non-acoholic brewing industry, and he's going to talk to us about where his company in particular is going. From the Wall Street Journal, I'm Christopher Mims.
1:11.3	And I'm Tim Higgins.
1:12.4	This is Bold Names, where you'll hear from the leaders of the bold name companies featured in the Wall Street Journal.
1:18.7	Today we ask, what is the future of beer in an increasingly health-conscious world?
1:35.1	Well, Bill, welcome to the show. When you got into this almost a decade ago, the market for non-alcoholic beer was very small. It was less than 1% of the overall American beer market.
	...

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