A few months ago, I found myself randomly scrolling Instagram when an event piqued my interest: a dim sum-meets-techno affair hosted by Beans&Beats. It was a sober party—and, upon arrival, I found myself greeted by swathes of siu mai, har gow and steaming baskets of dim sum circulating through the crowd, catered by Swee Choon Jalan Basar. In place of the usual vodka sodas and tequila shots, crowds were fuelled by the specialty coffee courtesy of Beans&Beats; dancing freely to soundtracks that veered between pop remixes, Chinese theme songs like Bu De Bu Ai (不得不愛), and hits from the likes of Fred again.. and Sammy Virji—with the volume loud enough to turn heads on the streets outside, certifying the event as a proper party. Noise in broad daylight is not common in a city like Singapore, and in a tiny space like Swee Choon, the bass isn’t attempting to hide itself.
Since then, the format has become increasingly familiar. I received a notification from a group chat to go on a 5K run followed by an ice bath rave. At the time of writing, my friend Ana tells me about a pizza day rave she went to last weekend. Whether these gatherings qualify as ‘raves’ in the conventional sense feels almost beside the point. Sober parties—with matcha, hot pilates, sound baths, and other wellness rituals at the centrepiece—are steadily reshaping Singapore’s social scene.
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Wellness as social infrastructure
Over the years, Singapore’s interest in sober socialising has only intensified. Granted, the phenomenon itself is hardly isolated. Across the globe, Gen-Z has increasingly gravitated towards daytime parties, with post-pandemic culture shifting away from alcohol consumption altogether. What feels particularly interesting, however, is why Singapore has embraced this movement so readily—and perhaps more fervently than many other lifestyle trends passing through the cultural zeitgeist.
Much like the Hyrox craze, sober partying is yet another symptom of a broader trend towards wellness and the ongoing tendency towards looking inward and recalibrating lifestyles. People are no longer treating their 20s as an era of peak condition. The aspiration is to remain hot, sexy, and healthy forever—regardless of age. “Now it is possible to be in your mid-50s and very fit, very healthy, and have very good biomarkers of health and wellness. That’s really inspirational. It is so nice knowing I’ve got 20 or more years of excellent health if I take care of myself,” says Chris Shearmon, co-founder of Wild Pearl Studio, who has been hosting sunrise cold plunge parties long before it became social media fodder.
Each of these collectives in Singapore have a distinct character. Beans&Beats serves specialty coffee at each of their events, transforming third spaces such as restaurants, cafes or museums into the scene of their parties. Wild Pearl Studio has since expanded to marathon cheer zones and sound system management. Exposure Therapy went viral for their matcha raves, and have recently expanded into sunrise pilates parties.
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If sober is the new sexy, does that mean traditional nightlife is—regrettably—out? Quite the opposite. All collectives are firm in the fact that they would not exist without club culture. Sober partying is not positioned as a replacement for nightlife so much as an offshoot of it—adjacent and unmistakably referential. “We would not be here without them,” says Ethan Tan, the marketing manager behind Beans&Beats. “It’s a symbiotic relationship.”
A matter of lifemaxxing and optimising community
The real distinction perhaps lies in who is entering these spaces, and why. Millennials and Gen-Z might be the primary groups occupying these run clubs and matcha raves, but they arrive there on entirely different social conditions. Shearmon, of Wild Pearl Studio, has been watching the crowds ebb and flow in Singapore for six years now; long before wellness was considered a trend. “Millennials have this work hard, play hard mentality,” he says. “Back then, me and my friends would go out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We would work out just as hard: cycling, yoga, gym, running. But our social life and our workout life were separate. We just want it all: socialise, take care of our kids, and take care of ourselves,” says Shearmon.
Sober parties are, in many ways, this attempt to “have it all”. Lifemaxxing, as some might call it. “I would love to see my favourite artists on a Sunday afternoon, because that’s an optimal use of time,” says Tan. Wellness and socialising no longer exist as separate categories, but have collapsed into one another entirely. Pilates is networking. Matcha is a stimulant. And the run club? They’ll attract you with a free pair of sneakers, but really, they sit somewhere between community-building and a potential dating pool.
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Though this rings true for Gen-Z too, the shift feels less ideological than practical. As explained by Harpreet Gill, co-founder of Exposure Therapy, it is not simply about rejecting nightlife, but reconfiguring when and how it happens. “A lot of people also say that they don’t really want to be partying at night anymore because they’re in transition periods of their life, from school into the working world and it’s getting more stressful for them. This is an avenue to have the same enjoyment, but in an environment where they can be present and still go back to their responsibilities,” says Gill.
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The challenge of rebuilding third spaces
This is also a matter of infrastructure. Singapore is simply not optimised for nightlife in the way other cities are. Public transport stops after midnight, alcohol is heavily taxed and licensing restrictions remain notoriously tight. “Recently, the costs have gone crazy for night parties—even we are feeling it,” says Gill. For Gen-Z—and especially those newly entering the workforce—that combination feels increasingly difficult to ignore.
Building a community without the infamous social lubricant of alcohol, however, requires careful care. For Exposure Therapy, that means intentionally creating opportunities for connection. “We get our MCs to be very interactive with the people,” says Gill. “Sometimes we have to start the party ourselves. We have to be the first ones dancing, and we’re exploring more ideas of having conversation starters.” Meanwhile, Beans&Beats has built an active Telegram community around its events, regularly prompting discussions online before funnelling people offline into restaurants, museums and cafés—spaces once considered too mundane for nightlife, now reabsorbed into the logic of the third space.
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Hydrated, socially fulfilled, and home by midnight
Sober parties are not really about sobriety at all. They are about trying to engineer a version of social life where people can still have fun, stay healthy, make friends, network, romanticise their lives, optimise their mornings and post about it afterwards—all without the emotional, physical or financial hangover attached to traditional nightlife.
Practicality, as unsexy as the word may sound, will always influence desire. Which is perhaps why these spaces feel so distinctly of this moment. It is the latest third space: except now there is matcha, a Telegram group chat, an ice bath and someone taking photos on a camera with the flash permanently switched on. In a humorous turn of events, Singapore—renowned for its constant desire to optimise everything—finds itself in the perfect sweet spot for sober socialising. Why hit the club at midnight, aim to hit the gym at 6AM and refuel with matcha in the arvo, when you can do a three-in-one (and be in bed at the perfectly reasonable hour of 10PM)?
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The question then: how sustainable is all of this? The social media appeal of matcha raves and ice baths can only endure for so long. The tricky part with building third spaces is caring for its people, without turning that care into a product. In-person experience will always be the best—and most enduring—form of marketing. Nevertheless, it is clear the people crave connection. Just as millennials once flocked to 21 Jiak Kim Street, the predilection to finding kinship in like-minded folk will always exist.
For now, it’s hardcore partying, laden with equally hardcore recovery metrics. And the fantasy of waking up the next morning hydrated, socially fulfilled and with a functioning circadian rhythm may just be the sexiest thing of all.
