Sonder Social Club

Sonder Social Club opened on Douglas Avenue as Dunedin's first craft cocktail bar, run by the Feinstein Group — the husband-and-wife team of Zachary and Christina Feinstein — and has been voted the best cocktail bar in Tampa Bay more than once since. It is known locally for house ingredients that sound like jokes and are not, chief among them Sonder Milk, infused with Golden Grahams, and for a deliberate no-Wi-Fi policy intended to make people talk to each other.

Its relevance here rests on a decision made at the outset rather than added later. Christina Feinstein was specific that guests should have a mocktail menu to choose from whether they were abstaining or simply wanted something different — which is why the zero-proof options are not a separate, lesser list but a property of the main one. Signature drinks including the Sky Miles can be built without alcohol, and the bartenders will construct custom spirit-free drinks on request, drawing on the same house syrups, infusions and milks that make the full-strength menu what it is.

That model has a real advantage over a fixed mocktail list: a bar this ingredient-driven can put its best work into a zero-proof glass, rather than confining a non-drinker to two builds chosen months ago. It also has a limitation worth knowing — with no printed section, ordering means a conversation, which is easy at a quiet hour and less so at midnight on a Saturday.

Practical notes: it opens at 4pm daily and runs to midnight midweek and 2am at weekends. The no-Wi-Fi rule is enforced. It is a full craft cocktail bar; the alcohol-free work is genuine and made to order rather than a section of the menu. Ask early in the evening rather than at midnight, when the bar is at its busiest and a conversation is harder to have.