SoBar at Alchemy Coffee

SoBar is what happens when a coffee shop decides the evening deserves the same care as the morning. From Friday and Saturday at 7pm, Alchemy Coffee's West Broad Street room changes character — the lights drop, live music starts, and the counter turns out a list of craft cocktails that contain no alcohol whatsoever. It runs until midnight. The rest of the week the same address trades as The Lab by Alchemy Coffee, a daytime cafe closing at 3pm, so the two identities barely overlap.

The distinction that matters for a non-drinker is between a venue that will make you something soft and a venue built for you. SoBar is the second kind. The drinks are named, composed and specific: Something Blue is a blueberry-ginger mule; the Not So Dirty Chai Martini borrows the savoury-spiced logic of the original; Cielito en Fuego, Lucid Sunset Spritz, Banana Bird and the High Priestess round out the list, and there is a non-alcoholic dirty martini for anyone who misses the ritual more than the ethanol. That is a cocktail menu, not a mocktail section.

Its importance to Richmond has grown for an unhappy reason. KavaClub, the West Main Street venue local press called the only alcohol-free bar in Virginia, closed in 2026, and Ceremony's Richmond bottle shop shut and moved to Norfolk. SoBar is now the city's only regular alcohol-free night out — a genuine bar atmosphere, with music, where nothing behind the counter contains alcohol.

The coffee-shop-by-day, bar-by-night model is worth noting as a pattern, because it may be how alcohol-free venues survive. A dedicated dry bar has to carry a full lease on evening trade alone, which is precisely the maths that closed KavaClub. Sharing premises with a daytime business removes that pressure: the rent is already paid by the espresso machine, and the evening only has to cover itself. The venues using this structure are the ones still standing.

Operator Bobby Kruger has talked about extending the concept to future Alchemy locations and exploring non-alcoholic wine production at Brambly Park. For now the practical advice is simple: it is two nights a week, 7pm to midnight, and worth planning around rather than dropping into. Anyone arriving during the day will find the cafe — The Lab by Alchemy Coffee, closing at 3pm — and not the bar.