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I'd wager that marketing figured out that people are willing to pay a premium for the added feature of not having alcohol.

Maybe the same segment that also pays more for premium (healthy, biological etc ) food.

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I'm not sure about that. As a teetotaler, I always cringe at how expensive a virgin mojito <or insert mocktail of choice> is, especially when they serve it in a tiny size appropriate for alcoholic beverages.

I'd order a lot more mocktails if they were more reasonably priced.

The alternative is an ethanol drink; there is basically zero economic incentive for a restaurant to lower it more than $1 or so below the price of a cocktail. Sure there's no sin tax but that is essentially pass through to the consumer, and the price competes against already sin taxed items.

Beverages at restaurants are always high margin and how they make much of their profits, they offer mocktails so they can capture the highest tier price preference for non alcohol consuming customers.

The incentive is to sell more of them. If they were cheaper, I'd order them occasionally. As currently priced, I'll just have water.

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