Long Road Distillers

Long Road Distillers opened in May 2015 as the first craft distillery in Grand Rapids, on Leonard Street NW on the city's West Side, and it is unusually literal about its process claims. The founding decision was to take no shortcuts, which in practice means the distillery does not source spirit and rebottle it: it sources ingredients, milling locally grown grain, fermenting and distilling every batch on site. Relationships with regional farmers underpin both the spirits and the kitchen, which runs a farm-fresh menu rather than standard bar food. The Leonard Street site has a full cocktail bar and event space, and the company has since added locations in Grand Haven and a third venue, Less Traveled.

What makes the taproom relevant to non-alcoholic drinking is that Long Road applied the same in-house production logic to zero-proof. In 2025 it launched Uncharted, its own line of canned zero-proof cocktails, rather than stocking a third-party mixer: the range covers a Chinotto, a Lavender Lemonade, a Lemongrass Mule and a Red Amaro Spritz, all bitter- or citrus-forward builds aimed at adult palates rather than the sweetened sodas that usually fill this slot. Those sit inside a broader non-alcohol list that runs past twenty selections, so a guest who does not drink is choosing from a menu rather than accepting whatever is available. This matters more at a distillery than almost anywhere else, because a distillery taproom is a room where the entire proposition is the alcohol — a serious zero-proof list is a deliberate decision by the people who make the spirits, not a concession. The bar trades Tuesday and Wednesday 4pm to 10pm, Thursday and Friday 4pm to 11pm and Saturday noon to 11pm, and is closed Sunday and Monday. Reservations are taken for the Grand Rapids room.