Emily Onkey is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Aplós, a pioneering non-alcoholic functional spirits brand redefining what it means to drink intentionally. With a background spanning Estée Lauder, CB2, and Bonobos, Emily brought deep brand-building instincts to a category most people hadn't yet taken seriously — and helped turn it into one of the fastest-growing spaces in the beverage industry. In 2025 she co-led a $5 million fundraising round for the brand, has driven triple-digit wholesale growth, and landed on Inc.'s 2026 Female Founders 500 List, all while navigating the complex, multi-channel landscape of e-commerce, retail giants like Total Wine and Sprouts, and prestigious on-premise partners like the Four Seasons, Proper Hotels, and Soho House.
What sets Emily apart isn't just the business results, it's the consumer focus behind them. At a time when the non-alcoholic category was still fighting for legitimacy, she recognized that consumers weren't looking for a compromise; they were looking for an upgrade. Her vision goes beyond mocktails entirely: she's building a zero-proof spirits brand that stands on its own merits alongside the world's best cocktails. That kind of cultural foresight, backed by real commercial traction, is exactly what makes Emily a founder worth watching and a voice shaping the future of how we drink.
Beyond Aplós, Emily actively invests in communities that reflect her values: she's a member of The WIE Suite and Female Founders Cabinette, two women-led professional networks and a board member of The Center in Bridgehampton.
Fashion and beauty taught me that a product can be an expression of identity — something you’re proud to wear, something that empowers you and speaks to your internal confidence. I wanted to bring that same energy to non-alcoholic spirits.
When we started Aplós in 2019, the non-alc space was pretty sparse and still something you felt uncomfortable ordering in front of a group of people. It wasn’t aspirational or sexy or luxurious. Nobody was treating it like a luxury category. We saw that gap as an important opportunity towards normalizing different definitions of drinking behavior.
A cocktail is a small luxury. It’s ritual, it’s sensorial, it’s a reason to pause. Aplós gives people that luxury in a means you find frequently in luxury fashion and beauty: with a point of view, a quality, and a world people want to live inside.
A podcast host I spoke with said she never wants to drink from a place of negative emotion. That stuck with me. During COVID, I think almost all of us were drinking from that space. Tension, worry, loneliness, boredom.
COVID stripped away the social and fun elements. The possibility of a night out, the connection, the fun — and what was left was just… drinking. A lot of people realized this cultural norm aligned with relaxing or having fun, was depleting more so than healing.
What people want is permission to pause. A ritual. Something to take the edge off the day. Alcohol is a higher-cost way to try to get there. When we launched, the perspective was binary, you were either a drinker or you were sober. Today people increasingly say: I still drink alcohol on occasion, but NA gives me permission not to drink unless I really feel like it. That’s a massive shift.
We saw early that the non-alc category didn’t need to be about abstinence. It could be about aspiration. Quality. Something you actively choose, not something you settle for.
I’m admittedly not great at keeping daily rituals, but I’m fully dedicated to my coffee in the morning, feeding the fish in the pond in our yard for a breather between meetings, and taking a hot second to go on a walk before I transition from my home office to time with my kids.
I actually love rituals that bridge friendships and occasions. My husband and I have an upcoming anniversary dinner to celebrate our 5 years of friendship with people who have become dear friends. We go to dinner every year on that date. Those types of traditions anchor the ordinary and give us reasons to celebrate and connect. That’s the part I love. Celebrating the ordinary.
Confidence. In my 40s, I’ve learned that confidence doesn’t have to be loud or announce itself. I lead with openness and humor, but underneath that I have a strong sense of conviction. When pressure builds, I trust myself to meet tough moments.
I was fortunate to be in the room for The WIE Suite event at which Gloria Steinem spoke. I had to blink back tears.
Time to be unproductive. We are inundated with productivity demands at every moment. And yet, my most productive ideas flow when I’m still. My mind is at ease, my perspective is clear. Aplós means simple in Greek and that simplicity is a simple, but true, luxury.
The push to live a more analog life.
I love memoirs and a few works stand out because they shaped how I think about ambition, cultural moments, creativity, or just memory itself — and they tend to drive me to this “social-circle rabbit hole”where I then go read everyone mentioned in the memoir's memoir.
