EASTHAMPTON — Elizabeth Mutti is moving her online non-alcoholic beverage brand into a brick-and-mortar environment downtown — a transformation she hopes will capture the frivolity of the drinking culture but do so with beverages that have been distilled of alcohol.

Her Easthampton-based brand, Dry Humor, has been in operation since May 2023 and offers a range of non-alcoholic beverages for delivery and at pop up-events throughout Hampshire County and Holyoke that are acquired from local wholesalers. This month Mutti prepares to open a space on Union Street for sober drinks motivated by the question, “Why not have a space just for people like myself who just don’t want to drink, but who still want to participate in that culture?”

She continued, speaking in her unopened storefront last month: “I love drinking culture. It’s not just having a drink. I mean there’s something about sitting at a bar after a good day or a bad day ... it’s timeless.”

Saying the business will center “more on the folks who are looking specifically to cut back or quit drinking,” like herself, she added that there are many others who can’t drink for medical reasons, such as those going through pregnancy or those with a gluten allergy who would benefit from her business as she aims to offer customers the most variety of non-alcoholic beverages in the area, including non-alcoholic beers and wines — even whiskey.

Mutti said that “sober people love to talk about it,” and related how she sees one aspect of what her space offers as an opportunity for “alcoholics to not be anonymous.”

Her own parents were alcoholics, and her brother died at 37 from alcoholism. While she doesn’t identify as an alcoholic, but more of an “all or nothing gal,” which led her to drinking excessively too frequently, she decided to cut alcohol from her habits after too many hangovers, and recurring feelings of being bloated and overweight after consuming alcohol.

Then, on Dec. 18, 2023, “I just woke up the day after a Buffalo Bills game in Buffalo, New York. And obviously, you know, had a time while I was there, and I just woke up and was like, ‘OK cool, I have to sit on a seven-hour Amtrak ride back to Albany, probably having to throw up at some point.’ You know what I mean? Just that horrible anxiety and illness, and it lasts for days, and I was like, I just can’t do this.”

Mutti, despite not having had a drop of alcohol since and who plans to stay sober the rest of her life, shared that she remains the life of the party:

“People think you’re going to lose so much of your personality and your life if you quit drinking. And then I learned really, really quick, within the first three months, that I’m still the life of the party ... and the best part of it is I’m going to remember all of it.”

Mutti has worked the past 15 years doing clinical trial research, and will be switching to part time to pour more time into Dry Humor. The local non-alcoholic beverage retailer was first featured as a pop up at the Asparagus Festival in Hadley last year, and has since been featured as a pop-up at other venues in addition to Mutti personally delivering products in Hampshire County and Holyoke after selling products online.

Mutti, who has driven around Hampshire County delivering products herself, has been her company’s only employee since she started the business — something she knows will need to change as she opens her retail space.

Her online distribution represented the first phase of her vision for the business, and the retail space opening this month is the second phase. Mutti plans to expand into a social haven as part of a third phase in upcoming months.

“Retail will have a lounge area, of course — a place for people to gather and have meetings. We’ll do events — tastings, things like that. Because we really do want to move in that direction of creating a social space,” she said, and pictures the place offering customers refreshing juxtaposition once the third phase of her vision is implemented.

“It’s so neat to be in an environment,” she said, “where otherwise traditionally at least some people, if not all, would be drunk, to there being the same environment but no one is drunk.”

Mutti says that sales have been very consistent since the brand began selling in May 2023, and thinks that her business has “legs to stand on.”

“If I have doubts, I’m like, no, people are really really encouraging,” she said. She also thinks that people are trying to circle back to supporting small businesses after close to two decades of online shopping dominating consumer habits.

“We love the convenience and we love Amazon ... but people are starting to realize the larger impact of their dollar,” she said.

Mutti said that the prices of her products are on par with alcoholic beverages, largely because of the costs of dealcoholization. The beverages are not simply manufactured non-alcoholic, but its contents are removed from alcoholic beverages by either the process of reverse osmosis, vacuum distillation, or controlled fermentation. The product is one that tastes comparable to the authentic alcoholic product, but without the alcohol content.

Locaed at 79 Union St., the date for opening has not been announced, but is expected to take place in January.

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gaettenet.com