Stephanie Styll, owner of Killjoy Booze-Free Beverage Shop, didn’t wait for a Dry January to roll around before kicking cocktails to the curb. Her epiphany came in October 2020, the month she celebrated her first birthday as a new mom. After living in Europe for more than a decade and traveling to 53 countries around the globe, Styll was used to exploring. Suddenly, in the stressful and often lonely days of sheltering in place in her hometown of Nashville, Styll—like so many people—found her alcohol consumption ramping up.
“I took stock and realized drinking wasn’t serving me well,” Styll says. “So, for my 40th birthday present, I quit.”
Styll’s break with booze mirrors a larger trend in the U.S., where young adults report drinking less than in previous decades and demand for nonalcoholic beverages is skyrocketing. Yet her decision wasn’t without its downsides. Drinking water when gathering with friends made her feel “childish and left out.” Styll knew there were lots of nonalcoholic options available, scattered here and there. She thought, “I wish there were a place where I could find them all together.”
Welcome, Killjoy Booze-Free Beverage Shop, which Styll and brother-in-law John Caldwell launched in April 2023.
Tucked away in a tiny boutique in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, Killjoy’s secret location lends a speakeasy vibe, ironically, to a store that happily prohibits alcohol. The location at 2020 Lindell Ave. is so hard to find that Killjoy’s website advises guests to...
“Go to The Loading Dock Coffee Shop. Look for the brightly colored mural on the patio. Say ‘KILLJOY’ out loud three times and an AF absinthe fairy will appear. Go in to the gallery and look for Killjoy signs. The shop is just around the corner!”
Persistence pays off, as the tiny liquorless “liquor store” is a treasure trove for anyone who loves the ritual and flavor of happy hour but hates the headache and hangover that haunt conventional cocktails.
Not much larger than a walk-in closet, Killjoy’s cheerful space of shiny balloons and twinkle lights brims with nonalcoholic wine, spirits and beers. There are two main differences from a traditional package store: There’s a bar cart in the corner with open bottles for sampling anything you’d like to taste, and no one’s going to ask for your ID.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to create alcohol-free beverages. You can remove the alcohol from distilled spirits, or you can combine nonalcoholic ingredients to achieve flavors that could hold their own in a bar brawl against traditional hooch.
In the first category are many alcohol-free wines, beers and whiskies, for example, from which the alcohol has been reduced to a negligible level. (Similar to alcohol-free beers are hop waters, which bring the bright hoppiness of beer to sparkling water without the expensive equipment and process to remove alcohol from a traditional beer.)
In the second category are products such as Dhōs Gin Free, which blends botanicals to create the tastes and feels of the traditional juniper based-spirit, and Drømme Awake, a botanical blend whose complex layerings of watermelon, pomegranate, hibiscus and cayenne can be sipped over ice or stirred with soda.
Styll says the fastest growing section in her store is drinks containing adaptogens—stress-targeting (and legal) ingredients such as mushrooms and CBD. This category of functional drink promises a combination of taste, health benefits and, in some cases, body buzz that more than makes up for the absence of alcohol. In fact, it’s not an absence that intrigues Styll as she builds her inventory of nonalcoholic, organic French Champagnes and lemon-and-ginger-infused beverages made from kava root. It’s the infinite opportunity to explore new ingredients and combinations in a familiar ritual of toasting with friends and family.
“I am a curious person,” Styll says. “I love to have new experiences. Now I have a whole bunch of new things to try, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out.”
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