Munich, home of Germany’s world-renowned Oktoberfest beer festival, will on Thursday open its first alcohol-free Biergarten (beer garden) in a nod to changing consumption habits among the party set and growing frustration with public binge drinking.
Die Null (The Zero) near the Bavarian capital’s main railway station will serve its patrons exclusively soft drinks, mocktails, juices, water and non-alcoholic beers in an attempt to strip the area of its boozy, seedy image.
Operators of nearby restaurants, hotels and cultural venues, who will be running the beer garden jointly, have long complained about tourists pouring out of trains drinking to excess alongside locals in keeping with Munich’s global image as a beer haven.
Guests at the open-air establishment will be allowed to bring their own food, and there will be free live entertainment provided by bands, choirs and solo artists as well as DJ dance nights and youth parties.
Munich’s aim is for the area to be “upgraded” and once again “anchored in the centre of society”, its city administration said, as beer drinking continues to steadily decline in Germany.
Bar owner Florian Schönhofer, one of Die Null’s backers, said the point of the venture was not to turn away from alcohol permanently but to show that there were attractive alternatives.
Over the last 20 years in the trade he had noticed a “dissolution of boundaries” when it comes to alcohol, Schönhofer said, with “young guys in business suits thinking nothing of drinking their end-of-workday beer on the commuter train”.
He said the reaction to the plans had so far been positive.
“Nevertheless we’ll probably make a loss,” he told weekly Die Zeit, noting that while there were patrons who could drink 10 beers in a night, few would order 10 fruit juices.
A municipal taskforce has been working to repel the raucous, alcohol-fuelled crowds from Munich’s railway station and city parks to make them safer and more inviting while cracking down on violent crime and drug dealing.
Die Null, which will be opened by the city’s mayor, Dieter Reiter, will run until 15 September, just under a week before the start of Oktoberfest.
Last year a church convention in Nuremberg experimented with a one-day non-alcoholic beer garden while a pub in nearby Großenohe, which was already gluten and lactose free, recently took alcohol off the menu too.
German beer drinking has been on a downward slide since the 1990s. With average per capita consumption at 88 litres a year, Germany is now behind its neighbours the Czech Republic, Austria and Poland.
The change in customs has threatened the survival of some age-old German breweries while others are pivoting to non-alcoholic beers, which have won fans by offering an excellent taste with lower calorie counts and no hangovers.
Germany this year also became the first big EU country to legally allow personal recreational use of cannabis.
