SKOSH

Skosh is slang for a small amount, and Haley Hilts named her Garfield Park shop for it when she opened at 2555 Shelby Street on 14 November 2023. Hilts already ran Authentique Design Collective, an Indianapolis interior design practice, and SKOSH is the retail expression of that: 1,600 square feet where the vintage furniture, the art on the walls and the ceramics on the shelf are all for sale, and where you drink a pour-over sitting in something you could take home. The Indianapolis Business Journal covered the opening as a hybrid of coffee shop and home decor showroom, which undersells the drinks side.

The framing Hilts uses is SlowBar — Indy's first, by her account — and the idea is a bar format without alcohol in it: coffee and tea from Illumine Coffee Co., wellness shots, and a list of named zero-proof cocktails made to order rather than poured from a bottle. The Fringe is the one local guides name, a garden margarita built without tequila. Food comes through an on-site partnership with PB&J Factory, and the room programs live music and community events in the evenings, which is what separates it from a coffee shop that happens to close late.

In the specific context of Indianapolis this matters more than it would elsewhere. The city lost its only fully alcohol-free bar when Memento Zero Proof closed in Fishers in 2024, and almost everything with a serious zero-proof list since then has been a bar that also serves alcohol. SKOSH is one of a small number of rooms in Marion County where the entire premise is alcohol-free and the drinks are still constructed — the Fringe is a made drink, not a soft drink — which puts it in a different category from a café with a bottle of kombucha in the fridge. Garfield Park is a fifteen-minute drive south of downtown, and the neighbourhood park itself, with its conservatory and sunken gardens, makes an obvious pairing.