Athletic Brewing in Columbus, OH

Law Bird is the Brewery District cocktail bar opened in November 2019 by married owners Annie Williams Pierce and Luke Pierce, both career bartenders; in 2017 Williams Pierce became the first woman to win the United States Bartenders Guild's Most Imaginative Bartender competition in London. The bar was a 2025 James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Outstanding Bar and has been named among the best bars in the United States by Food & Wine. Columbus Underground readers voted it the city's best non-alcoholic drink menu in the 2025 Best of Columbus poll. Roughly three new cocktail menus are released a year, each carrying named N/A cocktails alongside the full-proof list, and most specialty cocktails can be built without alcohol at a reduced price. Non-alcoholic beer comes from Athletic Brewing and Best Day.

The Guild House is Cameron Mitchell Restaurants' farm-to-table dining room on North High Street in the Short North, and was awarded One Michelin Key in 2024. Its beverage menu carries a printed section headed ZERO PROOF, which is what separates it from the many Columbus restaurants that will improvise something on request. The section runs six deep: Mionetto alcohol-removed sparkling wine from the Veneto by the glass or bottle, an Orange Spritz built on a spiritless aperitif and the same Mionetto, a Citrus Ginger made with Seedlip Grove 42, lime and candied ginger, a Blackberry Smash of blackberries, pomegranate and fresh citrus, an Espresso No-Tini using Lyre's coffee originale with fresh espresso, brown sugar and cinnamon, and a rotating Athletic Brewing non-alcoholic beer. Prices sit between $7 and $11.

Soul is the ground-floor bar and restaurant of Le Méridien Columbus, The Joseph, on North High Street in the Short North, open from 6am for breakfast through to late. Its cocktail programme is built around a research-led list called the Lost Cocktails of Columbus, which revives drinks tied to the city's own bar history — the Deshler, the Kahiki Coffee Grog and the Midwestern Negroni among them. A separate printed section headed ZERO-PROOF BEVERAGES carries four built drinks rather than a list of sodas: the Casablanca Fog and the Lawn Dart, both made with Garden Spirit, kiwi, kefir and agave; an Orange Blossom of Lyre's non-alcoholic gin with house orange cordial and New Orleans N/A bitters; and an Old Old Fashioned using Lyre's non-alcoholic whiskey with ginger and non-alcoholic orange bitters.

Marcella's is Cameron Mitchell Restaurants' Italian dining room on North High Street in the Short North, across the street from The Guild House and Soul at The Joseph, and it prints its zero-proof drinks on the same beverage list as the cocktails. There are two built non-alcoholic cocktails: Strawberry Fields, made with Seedlip Citrus, strawberry and a lemon foam, and a Citrus Spritz of Lyre's Italian Orange lengthened with alcohol-removed sparkling wine — an alcohol-free reading of the Aperol spritz that is otherwise unavoidable on an Italian menu. A rotating Athletic Brewing non-alcoholic beer sits alongside them. The coffee list is genuinely part of the drinks offering rather than an afterthought, including Il Finto Espresso with vanilla and honey and an affogato of vanilla gelato drowned in hot espresso.