Karuna Kava & Tea

Karuna Kava & Tea opened in Garden City in 2022 as the first kava bar in Idaho, and unlike most venues in this directory it has a reason for existing that is stated openly by the person who built it. Ben McQueen started the business as a result of his own path to sobriety, and he and Kayleigh McQueen run it explicitly as a third space — the sociologist's term for the place that is neither home nor work, where people encounter each other without an agenda. In a state where the default social venue is a bar, that intent does real work. The name is the giveaway: karuna is the Buddhist term for compassion, and the company's stated line is relaxation and wellness rooted in compassion. In May 2026 they opened a second room in Meridian, which is what a concept working looks like.

The drinks list is deliberately wide, because a third space fails if half the group has nothing to order. Kava is brewed fresh daily and served in named strengths including Strong and Riptide. Around it sits an extensive organic tea menu covering herbal, white, black, green and oolong; locally roasted coffee alongside chicory coffee and a mushroom blend for anyone avoiding caffeine or wanting something unusual; kombucha on tap, which the bar is careful to note is non-alcoholic at under 0.5% ABV; and locally crafted sodas and switchels from Erth Beverage Co. The room is furnished for staying — board games, books and playing cards on hand — with live music on Saturday nights. Kava itself is worth describing honestly to an audience that includes people in recovery: it is made from the ground root of a South Pacific shrub steeped in water, has been drunk socially across the Pacific for roughly three thousand years, and contains no alcohol whatsoever. It is, however, genuinely relaxing and mildly intoxicating in its own right, and it is served to adults rather than to everyone.