Merchant & Trade

Merchant & Trade is the rooftop bar and lounge on the nineteenth floor of the Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel in Uptown Charlotte, with panoramic views across the skyline. It is unusually large for a rooftop, spread across four distinct zones — an indoor bar, an outdoor terrace, a private terrace and a lawn — which means it works for a quiet drink and for a group occasion equally well.

The zero-proof programme is more serious than a hotel rooftop needs it to be, and that is the reason it earns a listing rather than a mention. The bar runs rotating seasonal spirit-free cocktails built with the same process as the alcoholic list, using real non-alcoholic products rather than juice: Seedlip Spice 94, Ritual Zero Proof spirits, and locally brewed Lenny Boy Ginger Kombucha, which is a genuinely good local sourcing decision rather than a generic mixer. The named drinks lean into Charlotte references — Bobcat Territory nods to the city's NBA team, The Gold Line to the streetcar — alongside the Endless Vacation, Madame Blackberry and the Faux & Falcon. Naming a spirit-free drink after a local landmark rather than calling it "virgin" anything is a small thing that signals how the bar thinks about the category.

Scoop Charlotte, covering the city's mocktail options, noted the bar offers "quite a few mocktails to sip on while you look out at the Charlotte skyline," and that the options change with the season — expect juices and flavours that fit the time of year. A rotating list is a maintained one, which also means the specific drinks named here will vary by visit. Open nightly from 4:30pm, to midnight on Friday and Saturday. Uptown Charlotte empties out considerably after the business day, so a rooftop with four separate zones and a real spirit-free list is one of the few places in the district that works equally well for an after-work group and a weekend evening.