Matthew Januszek and Mohammed Iqbal welcome Sam Moore — founder of Hazlo — to the LIFTS Podcast for a frank, data-driven conversation about one of the most significant cultural shifts in health and wellness: the move away from alcohol.
From Gen Z's changing drinking habits and wearable-driven self-awareness to the neuroscience of mood and sleep, this episode covers why functional beverages are gaining serious momentum and what Sam's own journey from corporate drinking culture to performance-first living reveals about where wellness is heading.
What This Episode Covers
Sam Moore is the founder of Hazlo, a functional beverage designed to replicate the social and mood-lifting rituals of alcohol without the physical cost. His path to building the brand ran through years inside high-stress corporate environments where drinking was embedded in the culture — a firsthand experience that sharpened his understanding of why people drink and what they actually want from the ritual.
Hazlo's formulation draws on functional ingredients targeted at mood, focus, and presence, positioning it within the rapidly expanding alcohol-alternative category alongside THC beverages, kava, and kratom-based drinks. Sam's work sits at the intersection of behavioral psychology, habit formation, and beverage innovation.
LIFTS is Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal's industry podcast, where they bring operators, entrepreneurs, and innovators onto a show built for fitness and wellness professionals who want the unfiltered story behind what's reshaping their world. Escape Fitness USA, Matthew's North American chapter of the brand, reflects the same forward-looking perspective on health culture that guests like Sam represent.
Key Moments from the Conversation
- Gen Z is consuming meaningfully less alcohol than previous generations, signaling a genuine generational shift rather than a passing wellness trend.
- Wearables like the Oura Ring are making alcohol's physiological impact on sleep quality, heart rate variability, and readiness scores impossible to ignore, accelerating behavior change among performance-oriented consumers.
- Alcohol measurably degrades sleep architecture, mood, HRV, and readiness — and wider awareness of these effects is driving the sober-curious movement as much as any cultural pressure.
- Sam's personal arc — from heavy social drinking embedded in corporate culture to building a performance-focused beverage brand — illustrates how the path to innovation often runs through lived experience.
- Hazlo's functional ingredients are designed to shift mood and focus in a way that satisfies the psychological ritual of drinking without the inflammatory and physiological downsides.
- The alcohol-alternative landscape is diversifying rapidly, with THC beverages, kava, and kratom products each carving out distinct consumer segments based on desired effect and occasion.
- Habit formation and psychological ritual are as central to drinking behavior as the substance itself — a reality that any credible alcohol alternative must address to achieve sustained adoption.
- Sam and the LIFTS hosts discuss the possibility that alcohol's social perception may eventually shift in a direction similar to cigarettes, driven by mounting health data and regulatory momentum.
Why This Conversation Matters
For fitness operators and wellness brands, the sober-curious trend is more than a niche lifestyle choice — it signals a fundamental reframing of what feeling good means to a growing segment of consumers. The same data-driven mindset that drove people to track their steps and sleep is now turning a critical eye on alcohol, and that creates both a challenge and an opportunity for anyone in the health space.
Matthew's own evolving relationship with alcohol, explored openly in this episode, underscores why LIFTS resonates with fitness professionals who see personal performance as inseparable from the products and culture they build around. Escape Fitness USA's focus on the next chapter of the brand in North America mirrors this episode's broader theme: that real progress comes from asking hard questions about habits we've inherited.
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube
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About Matthew Januszek
Matthew Januszek is the co-founder of Escape Fitness, the functional-training equipment brand he built from a UK startup into a global name supplying many of the world’s leading gyms, studios, and hotel fitness spaces. Following the separation of the UK and US businesses, Matthew’s focus today is Escape Fitness USA and the next chapter of the brand in North America. He hosted more than 300 episodes of the Escape Your Limits podcast and now co-hosts the LIFTS Podcast with SweatWorks founder Mohammed Iqbal, covering the business, science, and technology shaping the fitness industry. Explore more interviews and episodes on MatthewJanuszek.com.
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