Killjoy (Nashville)

Killjoy was Nashville's first booze-free beverage shop, and its founder tells the origin story plainly: on 1 April 2023, Stephanie Styll opened it with her brother-in-law John Caldwell, in a hidden 200-square-foot room at 2020 Lindell Avenue in Wedgewood-Houston — tucked inside a gallery, entered through the Crumbly Corner Cafe. Styll grew up in Nashville, studied psychology at MTSU, then lived overseas for thirteen years, travelled to fifty-three countries and took a master's in human relations before coming home. She stopped drinking in 2020, and by her own account spent about a year drinking only sparkling water before she discovered zero-proof drinks; the shop exists because the place she wanted did not exist in Nashville, so she built it. The business has since outgrown that first room twice over: it now runs two storefronts, at 1100 Fatherland Street in East Nashville and 2813 Columbine Place, open Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 7pm and Sunday noon to 5pm, closed Mondays.

The shelves are entirely alcohol-free, and the range is far wider than non-alcoholic beer and wine. The shop organises its catalogue — several hundred products deep — into adaptogens, beer, kava, kanna, mixers, ready-to-drink cocktails, spirits and wines, so it functions as much as a guide to an unfamiliar category as a shop. That guidance is the point: a bar cart sits in the corner with open bottles, and anything on it can be tasted before you commit to a bottle, which matters in a category where a $20 mistake is easy to make. Edible Nashville described a cheerful space of shiny balloons and twinkle lights brimming with non-alcoholic wine, spirits and beers. Two things are worth knowing before you go. First, this is retail with tasting rather than a bar with table service, so it suits browsing more than an evening out. Second, alongside the straightforwardly non-alcoholic stock the shop also carries kava, kanna, functional mushroom and CBD products — actively useful to some customers, and worth avoiding for anyone steering clear of psychoactives entirely.