Building a New Category: How Sèchey is Redefining Celebration Beyond Alcohol

Emily Heintz, founder of Sèchey, shares her journey from COVID-era revelation to pioneering a retail model for the adult alternative beverage beverage movement

Emily Heintz didn't set out to build just another beverage brand. When she launched Sèchey in 2021, her vision was to create the Sephora of adult alternative beverage drinks: a curated physical destination where people could taste, discover, and learn about alcohol-free and functional beer, wine and spirits, and an online store where they could shop those same products from anywhere.

Four years in, that vision is taking shape in ways that defy traditional startup playbooks. Sèchey operates both as a physical retail store in Charleston and as a brand with products in Target stores nationwide. The company has raised capital from angel investors rather than traditional venture firms, maintains a lean team, and is charting a path that prioritizes long-term category building over explosive growth.

We sat down with Emily to talk about founding Sèchey, building a hybrid retail model, and what's next for the adult alternative beverage space.

What inspired you to launch Sèchey?

It was really my own personal journey with alcohol during COVID. We were all stuck inside, and that was the first time I discovered new alcohol free brands offering another way to celebrate. With my background in luxury apparel and retail, I understood that if I was thinking about alcohol flexibility, there should be other people who are probably curious about it too. 

The name Sèchey means "dryish," and that was intentional. I didn't feel like the messaging of sobriety was for everybody. But I did think everybody would be interested in taking a day off, a night off, a week off, or maybe only having a couple of drinks and switching to alcohol-free options.

Because at the time we were all ordering online, I thought that was a really strange way to experience a brand. You can't taste it, can't try it, can't hold it. That's why I always envisioned a physical location where you can have tastings and events. The category can be so confusing: What's a nootropic? What's an adaptogen? How are mushrooms in this drink? How do you de-alcoholize wine? We needed a space to answer those questions.

The Sephora comparison is interesting. How does that model translate to beverages?

Sephora launched when people started to think differently about what they were putting on their skin. They launched a lot of indie beauty brands. I feel like we're seeing the same thing in adult beverages. This emergence of functional beverages, pre- and probiotics. I'm drinking a healthy energy drink right now!

It doesn't even have to be about alcohol alternatives. It's about the category in general. We carry gummies now, not just hemp gummies, but ones full of mushrooms or L-theanine or magnesium. Sèchey can mean a lot of different things, but it's really about health and wellness and drinking differently, celebrating differently. I just don't want people to feel judged. You can be sober-curious, or you can drink alcohol all the time but want a good mixer. We've got you either way.

What are your top-selling products?

Interestingly enough, anything Sèchey-branded is our top seller. People trust Sèchey and want to buy things with our brand on it. But as a category, functional ready-to-drink beverages are our top sellers. The non-infused, non-hemp brands. We work with BRĒZ, Aplos, and Little Saints. Those are probably our top three.

A good portion of our business today involves CBD, THC, or something in the hemp world.

How did you end up launching your own wine brand exclusively at Target?

Most people, when they launch a brand, raise money to create the product and scale it- we took a different approach. I looked for a retail partner who could lead the alcohol free movement and bring Sèchey's vision to neighbors around the country. Target's team was following the trend at the time and realized non-alcoholic was a true movement. So we helped Target select their initial brands and together launched Sèchey private label alcohol free wine.

Alcohol-free wine is a big part of my sales. People consistently want it because when you remove the alcohol, the sugar and calories are a lot lower. So we launched exclusively in one retailer nationally, which is not how most people launch brands. We did everything the opposite- our own way. But that pitch worked!

So now you're both a retailer and a brand. How do you manage that hybrid model?

It makes our business complex. Institutional investors don't know how to value a business with multiple channels of revenue. Most investors don't understand our model. And physical retail has been really frowned upon in the venture capital world.

But the hybrid model gives us optionality. We're about brand discovery, innovation, and education. That's hard to do if you're just focused on scaling your product online. 

Our DTC channels are up 40% this year organically, and I'm very bullish on physical retail because a new category like alcohol free requires education. We even have a partnership with Airbnb where people can book tasting experiences. It's the same concept as beauty. You want to play with it, you want to try it.

Why avoid venture capital?

Venture capital is usually very binary. It's their business model to invest in many different companies with large addressable markets knowing that some of them will go out of business but only 1 or 2 could return their entire fund. They have historically sought high revenue growth over profitability.  And today, they want both. Which is incredibly difficult to achieve in a CPG company at the earliest stages. There is no Plan B for me, so failure is not an option.

I've been blessed because we raised from a community of experienced CPG, retail and technology investors. I'm a solo female founder with a very small team, and we all wear a lot of hats. Posting on social media about the journey helps me stay connected to my "why" when things get uncertain. And there's a lot of uncertainty in a new category.

Who is your typical customer?

Our ideal customer is typically female, between 25 and 45. She's just looking to drink less and figure out options so she doesn't always have to have alcohol to celebrate, socialize or connect.

But I also think about accommodating people who don't consume traditional alcohol, similar to how we accommodate gluten-free or allergies. Every time we've done a daytime event or work-related event, people gravitate toward alcohol-free options because nobody really wants to be hammered around their coworkers. There just haven't been good options before. We're not really about sobriety. We're about optionality.

How do you view competition in the space?

We launched in 2021, so we're still in the early days. It's easy to compare, feel envy or lose focus when you see what other people are doing or how much revenue certain brands are publicly sharing. You have to have blinders on: “This is my why, this is my vision.”

I'm happy for other people, and I'm confident there's not another company doing what we're doing. I go back to Sephora. Sephora launched in the 70s. I'm on year five. There's a long way to go, and we're in it for the long haul. 

You mentioned needing flexibility to grow. How did Lunr come into the picture?

We were in the fortunate position of being able to ask our community for referrals. We knew we wanted a partner that could help us scale, and we were referred to Lunr. They checked the boxes of a long-term partner.

Having a partner where we're confident that if we get a massive purchase order from a major retailer, we won't be in the same position I was in two years ago. We didn't have a partner then, despite a pretty large purchase order. We've been super happy with Lunr.

What's your take on the federal hemp ban and how it might affect the category?

Prohibition didn't work. Legal intoxicating hemp products are now a $30 billion market. I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle.

I have conversations every day with brands, other retailers that carry hemp. I carry it myself, I believe in it, I consume it. We've got about six months to find a way to regulate it. My point of view is that we find a way to regulate it through the traditional alcohol system.

From a health perspective, THC and the cannabinoids in the hemp or marijuana plant are actually very helpful for sleep, arthritis, and pain. It's a category that's somewhat better than alcohol from a wellness standpoint. That's why I believe both non-alc and hemp should go through the three-tier distribution system, the same one that regulates traditional alcohol. I work very closely with traditional alcohol conglomerates on this. A lot of my competitors think non-alc and hemp should run through their own separate system, but I don't believe that. Working within the existing infrastructure makes more sense.

What's next for Sèchey in 2026?

We've been doing this for four years. As an early adapter and category leader, I know where the gray areas are. I have a good idea of how to connect brands, retailers, distributors, and guests.

My goal for 2026 is to set Sèchey up as a true platform to connect all those pieces. The biggest hurdle right now is that there might be shelf space for these products, but you're not going into your local bar or restaurant and finding good options. If they have an alcohol-free cocktail menu, the options might be subpar, not priced right, and bartenders don't know how to mix the drinks.

My priority is supporting the industry during a time of uncertainty when nobody has access to growth capital. How do we help everyone come together?

I always wanted flexibility to grow and skate where the hockey puck is going. Every year it's changed a little bit, and that's okay. We're technically still a startup. Sephora is a tech business. Domino's might sell pizza, but it's really a technology platform for pizza. I want Sèchey to leverage tech in the best way possible so we can have a long-term foundation.

Any final thoughts on where the category is headed?

It's early days. The whole category now, non-alc, hemp, functional beverages- it’s small compared to big-alc. But we've realized there's a better way to live and you don't have to have alcohol. You have to give people what they want, where they are. And that's what we're doing.

Sèchey partners with Lunr Capital for financial flexibility and growth support. Learn more at www.Sèchey.com