Several dedicated alcohol-free businesses are closing their doors. Verbena Free Spirited, a well-regarded non-alcoholic cafe, shop, and bar in Cleveland, will close at the end of September after three years, with founder Molly Cheraso planning to keep supporting the local market through events and restaurant consulting instead. In Washington State, the alcohol-free bottle shop Kindred Spirits is set to close in October after its retiring owners could not find a buyer. And in California, Monday Morning is shutting its La Costa brewery after four months while keeping its two San Diego bottle shops open.
None of this signals that alcohol-free is shrinking. Every broad measure of the category still points up. What these closures point to is narrower and more practical: a standalone venue that sells only alcohol-free drinks carries all the costs of hospitality with a smaller, still-emerging customer base and none of the fat margins that alcohol traditionally provides. It is a hard place to build a business, even in a growing category.
The Cr(af)ted Take
It is worth holding two facts at once. The category is growing, and the businesses built purely around it are having a hard year. That is not a contradiction, it is what an early market looks like: demand is real but not yet dense enough, in most cities, to sustain a room that lives or dies on alcohol-free alone. The pioneers who opened these places did the field a service, and the ones closing are not proof of failure so much as proof of how thin the margins still are.
The more durable path, at least for now, may be integration rather than separation. The same week these closures made news, hotels and restaurants were quietly building serious zero-proof menus alongside their cocktail lists, and thriving. Alcohol-free may not need its own dedicated storefront on every corner so much as it needs a real place on every good menu. Notably, the founders closing their shops are not leaving the category. They are moving into consulting and events, helping existing venues do alcohol-free well. That might be exactly where the growth goes next.
Original reporting: Cleveland Magazine →