photo by: Bremen Keasey

Emily Kate, owner of Nostalgia Room, pouring a nonalcoholic margarita. Her passion for bartending and the service industry and her path to sobriety led to her opening the Nostalgia Room, and she is also working to help other Lawrence bars expand their nonalcoholic options.

For many years, Emily Kate’s goal in life was to open up her own bar and serve people in Lawrence.

Kate started working in the service industry at 17 and became a cocktail bartender as soon as she could at 21, starting at the Bourgeois Pig, and loved it from the jump. But her time in the service industry also led to addiction, and that forced her to rethink her relationship with alcohol.

In 2021, Kate got sober, but the habit of bartending wasn’t one she wanted to kick. She would be making cocktails without alcohol for her friends at home, leading her to think about “how could I still do this?”

After she felt ready to tackle the challenge, Kate in the fall of 2022 opened up Nostalgia Room, a “dry bar” that featured craft cocktails without alcohol. Immediately, the bar was a success. Kate said people really embraced it, with regulars telling her it’s become their new space to hang out and feel at home. Some have told her the bar is their “third space” other than work or home for hanging out, and it still provides the “warm and fuzzy feeling” many people look for at their favorite bars, but without the alcohol.

“It feels like the pub around the corner,” Kate said. “People fall in love with it once they are here.”

Although Kate’s bar is unique in Lawrence as a dry bar, it mirrors a rising trend across the country — and across town — of a booming nonalcoholic beverage industry. Kate knows firsthand the ways that bars and drinking became a key part of social culture, but the nonalcoholic industry is “bursting at the seams” with options. She hopes to help lead the way in the nonalcoholic space and help bars provide more options for people who are sober or changing their relationship with alcohol.

“(Alcohol) is not the only option,” Kate said.

In recent years, the nonalcoholic beverage industry has been growing rapidly in the U.S. In 2023, overall volumes of sales of nonalcoholic products rose by 29% compared to the previous year, according to analysis by IWSR, a data group that analyzes the alcohol industry.

Kate’s bar “has nothing to do with the trend” and was an extension of her own journey to sobriety, she said, but the expanding options happened at a good time for her business.

Her drink menu features nonalcoholic takes on classics like margaritas — Kate said it’s probably the best nonalcoholic marg you can get — or dirty martinis and other specialty mocktails. The goal was to have a mix of options for customers. Some patrons might be sober but really miss the taste of a margarita, while other people come in for drinks that don’t taste like booze at all, Kate said.

photo by: Bremen Keasey

The nonalcoholic margarita from Nostalgia Room. It uses a blend of two different zero proof tequilas that helps make it taste like a classic margarita.

One of the keys to these drinks is finding really good nonalcoholic spirits, she said. Options were previously limited for those, but she was able to find a lot of great options for the bases of the cocktails that she personally vetted and tried herself.

“The industry grew around it, and we grew with it,” Kate said.

But the other key for Nostalgia Room is Kate’s bartending knowledge. The margarita, for example, uses a mix of two different nonalcoholic tequilas that Kate had tested out to ensure they had the right taste. That cocktail was easier to craft than other ones, and the bar uses proportions that are similar to the recipe of a margarita made with alcohol. But other classics, like a dirty martini, are more complex, Kate said. The proportions to make it taste like a classic and mimic that experience are a lot more complicated, and often leads to making things “from scratch.”

“You have to do a lot more work to be ready to pour the drink,” Kate said.

The bartenders at Nostalgia Room make about 80% of the products they use in-house, whether that be syrups, cordials or even their own nonalcoholic spirits. Kate said the bar will be producing its own line of spirits this year, including a take on the amaro Fernet. She said that process of making the spirits “toys with paying homage” to its taste while also making its own rules.

Nostalgia Room’s venture into producing nonalcoholic spirits coincides with the growth of this industry as a whole. ISWR found that the market for these nonalcoholic products in the U.S. was worth over $1.8 billion in 2023.

photo by: Bremen Keasey

The bar at Nostalgia Room featuring the zero proof spirts in uses. Its owner, Emily Kate, said she vetted and tried everything, saying the selection is “highly selected” on what is available.

Michael Amlung, an associate professor at the University of Kansas with the Cofrin Logan Center on Addiction Research, said he was encouraged by how more companies are producing nonalcoholic options, from small-scale craft producers like Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Company to much larger producers. It’s long past the days when the only nonalcoholic options at bars were water, a soda or a bad-tasting zero-alcohol beer, he said.

“You have options where you can get other nonalcoholic options with a lot of the same flavor and taste,” Amlung said.

Kate said that explosion of options makes it easier for other bars to carry more products for people who don’t drink alcohol. While her bar can focus on its craft mocktails because that’s the only thing they do, it’s just as easy for other bars in Lawrence to add to their selection, and they have started to do so.

Ryan Pope, the owner of the Bourgeois Pig, said over the past three years, its nonalcoholic offerings have expanded quite a bit. That’s in part because more and more people started asking for it, but also because the options grew.

Pope said the most popular nonalcoholic drink that people order there is the “Phony Negroni,” which comes prepackaged. All a bartender has to do is open the bottle and pour it over ice.

Not only does that make it easier for bars to stock nonalcoholic products, but Kate said it is also helpful for people like her to trust that other bars will be able to provide nonalcoholic options for sober people.

“I don’t need the big song and dance. I just need to know I’m going to have a really good drink,” Kate said.

While going out with friends or going to concerts once she went sober, Kate said it took time to rebuild her relationship with bars as a sober person. Having a quick and easy nonalcoholic option available — and knowing the bar will stock it — helped her navigate the anxiety of “blending in” and not having people ask why she wasn’t drinking.

In fact, those who don’t drink alcohol have plenty of company. A Gallup poll from 2023 found that 38% of Americans “totally abstain from alcohol.”

“There are entire groups in the society where alcohol is not an option for them,” Amlung said.

That can include people who don’t drink because of religious reasons, medical reasons or personal reasons. The regulars at Kate’s bar, she said, included a devout Muslim couple who didn’t drink alcohol because of their religious beliefs, but who also wanted to try all these classic cocktails from movies. Whatever the reason, there are plenty of people out there who are interested in nonalcoholic drinks.

“Sober clientele have money in their pockets, and they are ready to spend it,” Kate said.

The rise in nonalcoholic options has also led to more people considering their own relationship with alcohol, especially considering the suggestion earlier this month from the former surgeon general that alcoholic beverages should carry a warning about the cancer risks of drinking alcohol. Additionally, trends like “Dry January” — a plan to go the month of January without drinking alcohol — have become more common and culturally accepted, Amlung said.

Amlung said clinically, the idea of Dry January is called “sobriety sampling,” where people take a break from drugs or alcohol and see how the body responds. It can help people see how they navigate that short period of time and the differences of living without alcohol, even if complete sobriety is not the goal, Amlung said. Having nonalcoholic options can potentially serve as a harm reduction tool, where someone could go for that option instead of alcohol, lowering the total amount of alcohol that they consumed.

In a college town like Lawrence, concerns about binge drinking and overconsumption of alcohol are often brushed aside, said Vicki Collie-Akers, an associate professor in the department of population health at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a representative with LDCPH. Data from 2022 shows that the percentage of adults who engage in binge drinking — defined by the CDC as drinking in one sitting four or more drinks for women, or five or more drinks for men — is at 20% in Douglas County, 4% higher than the national average.

Collie-Akers said although the rate is higher in census tracts surrounding KU, the high percentages are distributed “across (the) county and in age groups spanning 18-45,” not just students.

Kate understands firsthand how Lawrence is “wrought with addiction issues” and a big drinking culture, noting people have asked why she opened up her dry bar in a college town. Part of it is she wanted to give back to the place that raised her, but she also “felt it was important to give people a different option.” Kate has said she loves seeing younger students come in and experience the space and interact with each other without alcohol, and that many have added it as a regular spot.

Kate understands everyone’s relationship with alcohol is different, and is not offended by someone who comes into her bar thinking it has alcohol, then leaves — which has happened. Other times, people stay and experience the atmosphere and return.

Kate hopes to continue to expand those nonalcoholic options across town. She suggests that bar owners keep space on their coolers for a couple of nonalcoholic beers, wine and some other canned things as an easy way to start. Pope said as the Bourgeois Pig has expanded its selection, they’ve had positive feedback and sales. Although that part is important, it signals to people who don’t drink that it is OK to be here.

“It’s an important thing to do, not even just to follow the trends, but to make sure everyone is fully welcome,” Pope said.

Her dream has come around full circle, and in ways that may have not felt initially possible, but Kate’s idea of owning a bar has not only come to fruition, but is thriving. Although it was not the initial vision, she is still serving people, creating an environment that allows people who might not have come out to drink and be social feel safe. And of course, there is still a bar that people can sidle up to while she pours them a drink — just not a stiff one.

“That was where this idea came from, the space without the substance, but the space can have so much substance,” Kate said.