Springfield’s only non-alcoholic bar recently ended its public hours, and the owner says she needs the community’s support for her plans to reopen in the spring.

Elizabeth Wake, the owner and operator of The Wakery, 5 W. Old State Capitol Plaza, said downtown businesses were already struggling this summer with revenue, especially compared to the summer before.

But after a fire destroyed multiple businesses on nearby Adams Street in June, The Wakery’s revenue went down by 67%. And as a business that had only been open for about a year, that was a major financial hit.

“It came to the point where I was not only not paying myself, but I couldn’t afford to pay my employees,” Wake said. “And I was losing money every day that we were open because the cost to pay my employees was even higher than what we were bringing in.”

The Wakery opened in April 2023, serving non-alcoholic cocktails (commonly referred to as mocktails), beers, wines and coffee. Their hours had been Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from 2 to 11 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 2 p.m. to 1 a.m. But by August, Wake realized that she had to make a change. She decided The Wakery would only have public hours on the weekends but maintained their hours for special events.

“I wanted to stay open in some capacity no matter what,” she said. “But as a business owner, I had a choice. I could sink, or I could build myself a life raft. So that’s what I went with.”

But after a month, in September, she realized that even that was not enough, and she made the decision to end all public hours.

“I’m being very strategic about our open hours and doing lots of events that can still bring the public in,” she said. “It’s not that we’re completely closed to the public all the time, but we are only open for things that, right now, we’re not going to lose money on being open with a crowd.”

The Wakery is now open for special private and public events, catering and only has public hours on nights when she knows there will be a crowd, such as when there are large events happening elsewhere downtown. Some of the special events she hosts include live musicians, artists and game nights.

“It gets tricky because when you bring in special artists, you have to pay them,” Wake said. “And so, it’s this really hard balance of wanting to give people a platform for their art and for whatever creative thing they have to do, and also making sure that I can pay all of my bills.”

Her goal is to reopen for select public hours in January, as she wants her bar to be a space for people participating in “Dry January.”  And by spring, she wants to have a grand reopening and get back to the full public hours.

“My hope is that throughout the spring, I can do a lot of really targeted marketing to make sure that people know that we will be opening back up and what those hours will be. And to get people really excited about it.”

She said the location of The Wakery was very intentional, as it’s wedged in between bars downtown.

“I want it to be a place where, if you’ve hit the bars and you don’t want to go home, but you want to stay out, you can still come here,” she said. “Or if you want to have that downtown nightlife, sometimes people will come here and pre-game without any alcohol, but they will start their night here and then go to the bars.”

Wake started the business after her experience of being pregnant during Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2021. She said that she felt left out, since most drinks involved alcohol, and the options that didn’t were limited and basic.

“I realized what a lot of other people live on the daily, because there are so many different reasons not to drink,” she said. “Thirty percent of American adults do not drink at all. Another 30% only drink one alcoholic drink or less per week. So that is 60% of our population that is drinking one or none per week.”

“Yet, all that we have to serve adults are bars and alcohol and craft breweries, which are all great, but we really needed something else. We need another kind of that third place, where people can still go out and socialize,” Wake said. “They can still get something fancy, they can still get something that tastes good but it doesn’t have alcohol in it. That was my inspiration behind this.”

Her motto is that The Wakery is a place for all people, “whether you’re sober, sober curious, looking to drink less, or done drinking for the night.”

Jade Aubrey is a graduate student in the UIS Public Affairs Reporting program.