How non-alcoholic pioneer Mother Root pushes flavour over function

If I had my way, it wouldn’t even be called non-alcoholic,” Mother Root founder Bethan Higson says of the botanical aperitif that has taken the low & no spirits category by storm. “It’s really about flavour and occasion. People are buying into Mother Root for a good drink – a proper drink.”

The search for a beverage that didn’t feel like a compromise was what drove Higson to come up with the idea for Mother Root over a decade ago, when she was pregnant with her first child, As she navigated evenings without wine, Higson craved the flavour, complexity and bite absent in most alcohol-free options at the time. “My preferred drinks were cool climate white wines and champagnes, which have a lot of backbone and acidity and structure,” she says. “The [non-alcoholic] replicas didn’t deliver the hit I was looking for. They had that sense of disappointment kind of baked in.”

Leaning on her decade of experience in drinks and hospitality, Higson began experimenting with vinegars after reading New York bartenders were using them to add complexity and depth to their cocktails. “Vinegar is amazing in terms of amplifying flavour and bringing length,” she says. “The fact it has something funky about it gives drinks a bit of edge, which makes them more adult and different from a soft drink.”

It took a further three years before Higson was ready to launch Mother Root – a concentrated, non-alcoholic ‘spirit’ made from apple cider vinegar, ginger and honey. By then, she was pretty sure she was on to something good, having tested the product extensively among family, friends and focus groups across pubs in south east London. “Everyone was saying: ‘I really love it. I wish I’d had this when I was pregnant.’”

Buoyed, Higson gave herself six months to launch, targeting a Christmas market in south London in 2018. “It was a bit like when you sign up for a marathon: put it in the diary and then figure out how you’re going to get there.” Early batches were made at home, but demand quickly outstripped the quantities Higson was able to produce. A husband-and-wife team were enlisted, who still produce some of Mother Root’s tipple today.

With production outsourced, Higson was able to start selling Mother Root to high-end restaurants, delis and bottleshops. When Covid brought that to a halt, she pivoted online, running Instagram tastings and offering influential food and drink communicators bottles to try. The move paid off in September 2020, when wine critic Helen McGinn featured the brand on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen. Mother Root was a smash hit with celebrity chef Yotam Ottolenghi, who was a guest on the show and described the drink as “beautiful” – sending orders through the roof.

“I had two months’ worth of stock and sold out within four minutes,” says Higson. “It took three months to clear the backlog. I wrote to everyone explaining the situation and told them it was fine if they wanted to cancel. Most were happy to wait. In retrospect it was a great way to build community among early adopters.”

Those initial fans included several high-net-worth individuals who helped Higson scale Mother Root over the next few years. The brand has raised £1.1m from a combination of angels, VC fund Redrice Ventures and friends and family.

Higson also filmed a Dragons’ Den episode in 2024, landing offers from three dragons. By the time the show aired last October, though, Mother Root had grown so quickly that Higson decided to turn down the investment she had accepted on air from Steven Bartlett.

“Steven and his team were amazing throughout and have been real mentors,” she says. “But it didn’t make sense to go with the original deal.”

Having built a loyal following of DTC consumers, Mother Root made its retail debut in 82 Waitrose stores in January 2025. Over the course of the next 18 months, the brand smashed every sales forecast it set itself, prompting rapid expansion across Waitrose’s estate ahead of launching into Sainsbury’s in October 2025 and Tesco this April.

Today, Mother Root is in over 2,300 stores nationwide, and its flagship Ginger variant is the bestselling low & no spirits product by value in the off-trade, ahead of Diageo-owned duo Gordon’s 0.0 and Tanqueray 0.0 [NIQ 52 w/e 8 August 2026]. Turnover is forecast to top £20m this year, driven by UK retail sales growth of over 500%, alongside expansion in the US, where the brand launched DTC last November.

Category booster

Crucially, Mother Root isn’t just stealing share from its competitors – it’s growing the entire category. In the past year, the brand accounted for 100% of net growth across low & no spirits in UK retail, having added £4.79m to a category that has only grown by £4.76m [NIQ]. “We’re bringing in people who have been left out up until now,” says Higson. “The products that were on shelf were not what they were seeking. Some of the non-alcoholic replicas are just a bit hollow and don’t deliver enough flavour.”

By contrast, Mother Root’s strong and distinctive taste is helping it stand out. “Some people told me to make it less strong and not use vinegar in it, but it’s the divisiveness that gets people hooked,” says Higson.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the latest IWSR data that suggests boomers, not Gen Z, are the biggest moderators, the brand over-indexes among females aged 55 and over. “Either they’ve completely given up [alcohol] recently, or they’re on a moderation drive,” Higson explains. “Many are busier than they’ve ever been, still looking after kids or elderly parents. health is really high on their list of priorities so they can fit everything in, but they’re not optimisers or biohackers. They recognise that pleasure is a key part of feeling good as well.”

Therefore Mother Root isn’t – and doesn’t pretend to be – an elixir. “Flavour is its function,” says Higson. “We’re made with a very simple list of ingredients, and it’s the process we undertake to make it that delivers the complexity and keeps people coming back.”

The long-term vision is clear. Higson wants Mother Root to shed category descriptors in favour of creating a brand built around the 6pm ritual – rather than the idea of abstinence. “Aperitif is probably the best‑placed word, because it speaks to the occasion and the moment,” she says. “If we start thinking about occasions rather than just low & no versus BWS, then there’s still much room for growth.”