Raising the bar: Dublin's dry(ish) pub one year on

As young people lose the taste for alcohol, Board's menu of zero per cent drinks and board games finds an eager audience

- By Lisa O'Carroll DUBLIN

Doing Glastonbury sober is a challenge most music-festival fans would decline. But it was just that experience that inspired Trevor O'Shea to launch his first dry pub in a chain of entertainment outlets in Dublin last January.

Taken aback by the lack of options for non-drinkers, he set himself an ambitious task in a country renowned for its drinking culture.

"I went to Glastonbury [in 2023] and I wasn't drinking at the time and the options at Glastonbury were shocking," he said. "All you could get was Erdinger non-alcoholic beer, Red Bull, Coca-Cola, coffee and maybe juices. It was fine on day one, but on day four you're done with it.

"So I was flying home and I was thinking of changing that bar at the time and I thought I love a challenge and there's no bigger challenge to have a no-alcohol bar," said O'Shea, who runs the Bodytonicmusic company.

Thus Board (styled as BO%ard), on Clanbrassil Street, was born, offering a vast array of non-alcoholic options ranging from a draught selection of Estrella, Heineken and Guinness 0.0, the bar's bestseller, to zero-alcohol spirits including gins and vodkas, mocktails, alcohol-free wines and a range of IPAs with suitably unconventional names, such as Weird Weather and Drink in the Sun.

"What we have noticed was that the market was far more diverse than just people who might have had alcohol problems," said O'Shea.