Free AF

King's previous venture was Eat My Lunch, a New Zealand social enterprise, and she brought a purposeful approach to Free AF: the founding premise was that the alcohol-free category lacked an option that felt genuinely grown-up in a social context. Not a juice, not a sparkling water, but something designed to sit comfortably alongside full-strength drinks at a dinner table or a bar, for sober-curious drinkers who want social parity without compromise. Early backing came from New Zealand venture capital firm Movac, which led the brand's seed round.

The most technically distinctive feature of the Free AF range is Afterglow, a proprietary botanical heat extract that replicates the warming sensation associated with drinking alcohol. This approach puts Free AF within the growing field of alcohol-free products that use functional ingredients to close a sensory gap, rather than relying on flavour alone. The alcohol-free RTD cocktail range covers multiple classic formats, giving consumers a ready-made option for occasions where a more complex drink is expected.

Free AF operates under the name AF Drinks in its home market of New Zealand, with the Free AF name adopted for international markets to avoid category ambiguity. The brand expanded into the United States in early 2023 and has since established a retail presence across multiple international markets. Lisa King also operated a pop-up alcohol-free bottle shop in Auckland named Curious AF, which served both as a showcase for the brand and as a consumer education initiative for the broader AF category.

Distribution is multi-channel, spanning mainstream supermarket and online retail channels in its international markets. The seed investment from Movac gave Free AF the capital to scale internationally within a few years of its 2020 launch, an unusually rapid internationalisation for a brand originating outside the US or UK markets. Free AF's brand identity centres on the sober-curious drinker who wants a considered choice rather than an absence: the Afterglow extract is the most visible part of that ambition, but the ready-to-drink cocktail formats reflect the same thinking throughout the range.