The Hills Market Downtown

The Hills Market Downtown occupies a corner site at 95 North Grant Avenue in the Discovery District, the quarter east of the central business district around Columbus State and the Columbus Museum of Art. It is the downtown sibling of the original Hills Market on Olentangy River Road, and functions as a full independent grocer — produce, butcher counter, prepared food, coffee — rather than a specialist drinks retailer. It is included here for one specific reason: the zero-proof section.

Columbus does not have a dedicated non-alcoholic bottle shop with a shopfront. Better Beverage, the city's specialist, trades through pop-ups and delivery; the wine merchants that carry alcohol-free bottles carry a handful each. The Hills Market Downtown instead runs a standing end cap of close to forty different non-alcoholic wines, beers and spirits gathered in one place — alcohol-free gin, whiskey, tequila and rum, ready-to-drink cocktails and pre-mixed gin and tonics, dry sodas, fruit juices and alcohol-free sparkling wine. The practical value of that is comparison. Buying a zero-proof spirit unseen is an expensive gamble, because the category varies enormously in quality and the bottles cost near enough what the alcoholic equivalents do; a shelf where four or five can be read side by side, with a member of staff nearby, is a materially different proposition from ordering online. The store has also run occasional happy hours around the section. Opening is daily from 8am on weekdays and Saturdays and 9am on Sundays, closing at 7pm throughout — early by bar standards, so it is a stop to make before an evening rather than during one. The store is the downtown counterpart to the original Hills Market on Olentangy River Road, and functions day to day as a neighbourhood grocer for the Discovery District — produce, butcher counter, prepared food and coffee alongside the packaged aisles — which means the zero-proof section can be folded into an ordinary shop rather than requiring a separate trip. Non-alcoholic beer is also stocked more broadly here than in most central Columbus retail, and the range extends to dry sodas and fruit juices for anyone building a drinks table rather than buying a single bottle.