Verbena Free Spirited

Verbena Free Spirited opened in July 2023 at 1434 W. 29th Street, the Hingetown storefront that previously housed Cleveland Tea Revival, and it remains the first gathering space in Cleveland to be entirely alcohol-free. Founder Molly Cheraso reassessed her own relationship with alcohol during the pandemic, found that the non-alcoholic products she wanted were not sold anywhere in the city, and spent a year researching the category before signing a lease. What she built is three businesses in one room — a cafe, a retail bottle shop and a dry bar — running on a split schedule: Duck Rabbit espresso, Cleveland Tea Revival loose-leaf blends and vegan-friendly food made in house through the morning, then a free-spirited cocktail list from the afternoon. Cleveland Scene readers placed it third for Best Alcohol-Free Bar in 2026.

The drinks are built from the same functional and zero-proof spirits the shop sells rather than from juice and soda, and they run $8 to $9 — deliberately under what a comparable cocktail costs a few doors away. La Verbena pairs the house verbena tea blend with a choice of Aplos Arise or Aplos Calme; Lavender Haze, the drink local writers reach for first, is butterfly-pea iced tea with bonbuz and lavender; Shark Bite uses the house Shark Week tea blend with Dromme Awake; Cin Cin is an unusual build of Seedlip Spice 94, spiced coffee syrup, sweetened condensed milk and Coca-Cola; the Ghia Affogato simply pours the Ghia aperitif over raspberry sorbet. Kava Limonada uses a Kava Haven kava spirit with lime and condensed milk, one of several kava-based options the menu identifies as such. The Bottle Shoppe stocks around a hundred products, including Newblood non-alcoholic wines, The Pathfinder, Trejo's gin and tequila alternatives, Kin and Leilo, so the room doubles as the city's only dedicated place to buy the category rather than order from it.