Alcohol-Free Things to Do in Spokane

Bijou is a neighbourhood cocktail bar in Browne's Addition, Spokane's oldest residential district, with a menu split between house specialties, classic cocktails, warm winter drinks, seasonal coffee blends and a standing mocktail section. The alcohol-free drinks are made from the bar's own components rather than bought mixers — butterfly pea flower tea, house elderflower and lavender syrups, fresh citrus — and the bartenders build to taste, asking which flavours you like and dislike before making something rather than pointing at a list. Open every day from 3pm, to midnight most nights and 1am on Friday, which makes it the most reliably open room in this guide.

Garden Party is a combined plant shop and bar on South Madison Street in downtown Spokane, a room full of greenery where the drinks list runs to wine, wine cocktails, champagne cocktails, a couple of local taps from YaYa and Lumberbeard — and an entire mocktail menu of its own. Its most useful feature for a non-drinker is structural rather than liquid: the door is not carded, only the order is, so under-21s and anyone who would rather not be assessed on the way in can sit in the room like everybody else. Small bites rotate, with a grilled cheese made on bread from the bakery next door. Thursday to Saturday, 4pm to 11pm.

The Boneyard is an all-ages craft cocktail lounge in the Greenacres part of Spokane Valley, opened by a mixologist who also produces Side Hustle Syrups — the craft syrup line every drink in the room is built on, alcoholic or not. That vertical integration is the reason its mocktails hold up: a Spokane Mule, a zero-proof Old Fashioned and a White Linen are made from the same house components as their full-strength counterparts rather than from a separate bottle of cordial. Being all-ages makes it one of very few rooms in the metro where a family or an under-21 group can sit at a proper cocktail bar. Wednesday to Saturday, 3pm to 9pm.

Zola is a live-music bar and restaurant on Main Avenue in downtown Spokane, a room built out of salvage and oddities with bands most nights. Its mocktail list is the most deliberately constructed in the city, and the reason is personal: head bartender Sheldon Moore expanded it after getting sober, and holds the alcohol-free drinks to the same standards as the cocktails — measured pours, proper technique and real non-alcoholic spirits, with Figlia among his preferred bases. His stated aim is drinks with some bitterness and structure rather than another sweet soda, which is the complaint most non-drinkers have about bar menus. Open from 4pm, to midnight midweek and 1am on Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday.

Cease and Desist Book Club is a downtown Spokane speakeasy hidden behind a bookcase on North Washington Street, with a literary conceit that runs through the drinks — a vanilla saffron old fashioned, a Bananas Foster, a Spring Cleaning. It keeps a mocktail list built to the same theme, so a non-drinker gets a drink that belongs to the concept rather than one that sits outside it. The room is small, dim and shelved wall to wall, and it keeps the longest hours of any cocktail bar in this guide: 4pm to 2am Tuesday through Saturday, with earlier closes on Sunday and Monday.

Radio Bar is a neighbourhood cocktail bar on Northwest Boulevard in Spokane's Audubon-Downriver district, a cosy room with a fireplace and a retro sound system, well outside the downtown bar cluster. Its drinks list balances classics with the bartenders' own creations, and carries a handful of non-alcoholic cocktails on a rotating seasonal basis alongside a range of alcohol-free beers — the seasonal rotation being the point, since the list changes with the produce rather than sitting static. Imported wine, bottled and canned beer, cider and seltzer fill out the rest. Open Tuesday to Saturday from 4pm, plus Sunday afternoons, closed Monday.