Kansas City Food Blog

Flickr: Thomas Hawk

Because I'm a good friend, I've spent my share of nights at bars sipping on coffee, soda or mostly water trying to enjoy drunk people as much a sober person can. Being a designated driver has one major upside -- safety -- but some minor drawbacks, one of which is limited drink choices.

Many bars are trying to change that, hence the growing popularity of "mocktails." The idea behind serving mixed drinks with a lot of flair but no booze is that designated drivers and non-drinkers like flavorful things just as much as drinkers, and if these people are going to be in a bar taking up space, you might as well try and get money out of them.

But despite the release of new products like juniper berry flavored water (for ginless gin and tonic) and a host of energy drinks, mocktails have yet to take non-drinkers by storm.

That's not to say they won't catch on eventually. The Wall Street Journal weekend edition featured an article on how, slowly but surely, non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic drinks became popular. A small minority of the population drinks O'Douls and other near-beers (one person being former president G.W. Bush) but a far greater part of the population enjoys root beer, which was the original near-beer.

The inventor, Charles Hires, promoted root beer as a great temperance drink but the Women's Christian Temperance Union still opposed it because of the word beer in the title. This New York Times editiorial from 1896 notes with surprise that the WCTU's stance on root beer is that it's "the devil's plan to induce people into drinking alcoholic drinks without knowing it." The WCTU dropped its stance only after Hires proved root beer contained no actual beer.

A less well-known version of a cocktail evolving into a non-cocktail is the gin rickey. A non-alcoholic version eventually lead to the lime rickey which eventually lead to Seven-Up and other citrus-flavored soft drinks. And why are soft drinks called soft? To distinguish themselves from hard drinks. So they are are an off-shoot of booze as well.

Getting back to today, the most successful mocktail I've found in bars is not based on a cocktail, but comes from an espresso machine. If you've ever been in a bar for four hours without drinking, you quickly realize how boring they can actually be. Caffeine is often the only thing that will keep me awake. By not drinking, I don't mind splurging for a cappuccino, which is cheaper than two beers and the bar doesn't mind serving it because the mark-up on coffee is even higher than it is on booze.

The bar wins, you win, your drunken friends win and the WCTU would approve.