Entrepreneur Jo-Anne Reynolds on the Birth of Canada’s Sober-Curious Movement

Founder and CEO of Sexy AF Spirits, Jo-Anne Reynolds considers herself to be a cheerleader for the collection of alcohol-free (AF) drinks manufacturers and advocates that make up the Canadian AF space. This is a grave understatement, though, because the Calgary-based Reynolds is more the championship team itself than a cheerleader. 

A tenacious trailblazer, savvy entrepreneur, and creative sage, Reynolds is a powerful force to be reckoned with. She is perhaps the most notable role model for all wanting to be more inclusive in the hospitality space when it comes to alcohol-free drinks and education. And she’s achieved this status — as a public health crisis has been sweeping the world, mind you — because Reynolds is keenly aware of the fact that when you include others, you allow them to feel confident and sexy as fuck. 

The line features alcohol-free premium spirits with names as cheeky as the brand name itself (the “AF” in Sexy AF stands for alcohol-free, if you were wondering). Staples include ViirGiin, Triple Sexy, Amar-Oh, AperTease, Friski Whiski, and Spiced Yum. Each spirit is plant-based, vegan, contains 0.00 per cent alcohol, is allergen free, gluten free, sugar free, low calorie, and low in carbs. So far, the brand has received multiple double-gold industry awards for its carefully-crafted products.

Sexy AF’s origin story has taken on a folkloric gleam. It all started around four years ago — at a time when Seedlip was making a name for itself on the U.K. markets — on a long weekend, during a girls’ trip in California, Reynolds says. Reynolds found that she was the only one among her friends who was ordering alcoholic beverages, most of her friends didn’t drink for religious reasons, or because they were training for a marathon, or because they were trying to get pregnant.   

“It was awkward that every single time we went out, they didn't know what to drink, besides tea, water, pop, or some sugary drinks like Shirley Temples,” Reynolds says. “And if they would speak to the bartender, asking them, ‘make me something alcohol-free,’ the bartender would ask, ‘what do you want?’” This question would always lead to a long pause among her friends, Reynolds says, because her friends didn’t know what they could order, what their options were, and the bartender couldn’t figure out a concoction that was healthy and delicious.

The uncertainty among her friends, their inability to make a decisive and confident decision, was what ignited in Reynolds the desire to create an alcohol-free spirits label, she says. With an option like Sexy AF Spirits on the market, a person can go up to a bartender and confidently, unabashedly order a mixed drink in whose holistic goodness they can trust. 

This idea of taking up space without apprehension is something that undergirds every aspect of Reynolds’ brand’s initiatives — it’s most noticeably apparent in Sexy AF’s name, but also the look and feel of the brand’s bottles. The first requirement that informed Sexy AF’s aesthetic design for Reynolds was that the product be big and bold, that it capture the consumer’s attention from the space it took up on the barback, that it prompted curiosity. Accordingly, the iconic Sexy AF bottles stand tall and bright, like one of the most iconic buildings in the world. 

“The bottle itself I chose because it reminds me of the Empire State Building,” she says. This is a building that, when a person looks at it directly or sees a likeness of it, they know exactly what it is. This instant recognition is what Reynolds is going for with her branding, too. Feedback from consumers allowed Reynolds to learn that the regular shopper appreciates being able to understand a product as soon as they see it, without having to read too much fine print, she says. This feedback seamlessly complemented Reynolds’ desire to create a bold product that would brazenly take up space.   

Being immediately recognizable is handy not only in a bar or restaurant environment, where a bold bottle allows the circuitous and ultimately futile conversations between bartender and consumer, like the ones her friends had in California, to be exploded by swift decisions, but also when it comes to personal shopping.

Reynolds didn’t initially plan on making Sexy AF Spirits available to the average consumer, she says. The line of spirits was initially headed straight to barbacks and restaurants, into the hands of professional mixologists. But then the pandemic happened, and instead of falling into self pity, Reynolds flexed her keen business acumen, and to stunning effect.

“The same week that COVID-19 hit [was the same week] I did my pre-launch,” Reynolds says. “Everything shut down and I quickly had to throw up the website that you see today to start selling directly to consumers. Along with this came this huge educational component.”

Sexy AF’s educational element has become an integral part of not just how the brand functions, but also how it relates to its consumers. Just head over to the brand’s Instagram page to see example after example of Reynolds and the brand working not only to delineate non-alcoholic products from those that are alcohol free, but also to demystify what it means to be sober, sober curious, and what it means to create inclusive spaces. Creating welcoming spaces that are also fun can only happen through education for Reynolds. Education here means not only the work Reynolds does to help consumers understand how they can use Sexy AF’s products, or what the ingredients mean, but also self-education: Reynolds is working continuously and consistently to learn and grow alongside her community and the market.

“I'm like a sponge, there's so much to learn about,” Reynolds says. “There's so much to explore, to get advice from other people and mentors about. It boils down to you wanting to do better for yourself.” A desire to do better for herself, and friends and family, is at the crux of Sexy AF, of the ethos of confidence, and also, Reynolds hopes, what fuels her customers and community to learn and feed their curiosity about being sober.

This is all to say, Reynolds knows exactly what she is doing and exactly what she wants to accomplish within the alcohol free space in Canada. This is what raises her to the level of seasoned expert and pioneer. She knows, for example, that the non-alcoholic offerings by Big Alcohol are transient and profit-seeking. She’s also got enough experience under her belt to see where the AF space as a whole is headed, and that the futures of this and other fields lie in the hands of a diverse group of people.

Historically, the world of spirits has been a pretty male-dominated field, but this doesn’t intimidate Reynolds in the least. “It's an old boys club for sure,” she says. “If I try to attend a meeting, or want to get involved in a community initiative, and if it's all run by a group of old guys who are just not interested in having a woman participate, that's fine. I just take that [in stride because] I can go off and do something on my own with a different group of women. [What we do will be] bigger, better, badder, and more successful. It always puts a fire in my belly when I can't do something [because] it looks like it's shut down for different reasons, especially when it comes to gender. I don't take no for an answer.”

And the proof for this is in the pudding. Sexy AF Spirits have received an Alberta Beverage Award for Best in Class, and Double Gold at the 2021 San Francisco World Spirits Competition for its Triple Sexy, Friski Whiski, AperTease, and Amar-oh products. Reynolds is super proud of what she’s created with Sexy AF, especially in the sense that she’s created a space in Canada where curiosity about alcohol-free drink options can flourish — this is a space whose future she is very optimistic about.

The fact that Big Alcohol is trying to take advantage of the sober-curious movement, as Reynolds has termed it, is evidence of the AF space’s success and longevity, of its permanence. But even these big companies are seen not as competition or a threat, but as an opportunity for growth by Reynolds. Something like Tanqueray’s alcohol-free gin is evidence that consumers are becoming more sober curious and more mindful with regards to what they put into their bodies, Reynolds says. 

“If I try to attend a meeting, or want to get involved in a community initiative, and if it’s all run by a group of old guys who are just not interested in having a woman participate, that’s fine. I just take that [in stride because] I can go off and do something on my own with a different group of women. [What we do will be] bigger, better, badder, and more successful. It always puts a fire in my belly when I can’t do something [because] it looks like it’s shut down for different reasons, especially when it comes to gender. I don’t take no for an answer.”

“More people are researching [alcohol free] and looking into it and learning about the disadvantages of consuming alcohol,” Reynolds says. “I do see [the sober-curious movement] being more in the lines of what happened to the tobacco industry.” Reynolds means the gradual shift away from tobacco that took place as more and more people learned of its harmfulness.

But what differentiates Sexy AF Spirits from Tanqueray or Heinekin is the authenticity and strong will that Reynolds leverages. “[Big brands] are going to come up with some really quick products and they're going to see what happens and it's probably going to fizzle out at the end of the day,” she says. Big Alcohol does not, in other words, have the advantages that Reynolds has, which include the genuineness — the girls’ weekend — that serves as Sexy AF’s foundation, her sponge-like intellect, her acumen, and unique point of view. Unlike Big Alcohol, whose products scan as efforts to jump onto the bandwagon, Reynolds’ efforts stem from the understanding that the sober-curious movement isn’t a fad, it’s here to stay.

“We're here for a long time, we’re not just a blip on the radar,” she says.