Sober Lab

Part of

Let’s get involved and Start to meet the fit within reach.

MA 2023

Keywords

Alcohol-free, Community, Social

Overview

Sober Lab is an on-site alcohol-free social experience in partnership with a group of flat chains, founded by three students from RCA Service Design.

We established a pop-up bar social experience service, with Ziroom Apartment as the representative brand flat partner, building collaboration between apartments and non-alcoholic drinks.

We believe that a sense of belonging in the neighbourhood is always more tangible than a big new city. We hope that our service will help our users maximise their limited energy in their spare time working, and to feel happiness outside of the struggles and stresses.

At present, Sober Lab is working on further refining its business model and is trying to reach out for cooperation.

Let’s get involved and Start to meet the fit within reach.

Collaboration

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Background

After the Covid-19 era, there is a declining trend of strong liquor sales in China. The sober curious movement becomes popular. Instead of drinking with the cost of health, more and more people prefer mild & light alcohol in the market.

At the same time, alcohol consumption is more dominated by 25-30-year-olds, while 79% of young people say they go to a cocktail bar every week for networking through our survey.

When those young Chinese professionals move to a new city for better career opportunities, their old circles was broken, but the new one is yet to be established. They will go through this lonely period named「Double de-embedding」. Struggle in this life stage, most of them will choose to drink to make new friends and build a new circle in the fastest way.

But, shortcuts always come at a price. What they get first is a physical burden&mental drift.

Every drifting youth needs to go through this stage of renting an apartment. Research shows that 90% of Chinese drifters are renting, more surprisingly, 1 out of 14 people are living alone.

Whereas group housing creates a fractured relationship between these locals and the migrant population. When these drifting youths return to their temporary homes, the feeling of loneliness is even more pronounced.

Therefore, we decided to focus on the living radius of this drifting youth and help them find an answer to their loneliness.