Podcast S01E02: From Foraging to Flaming Oranges- Inside Spilt, Canada's First Dedicated Non-Alcoholic Bar

When Joanne Pearce quit drinking in October 2020, she had no idea it would lead her to open Canada's first dedicated non-alcoholic bar. On this episode of On the Wagon Podcast, the co-owner of Spilt in Edmonton joined me to talk about her accidental path into the non-alc world, the philosophy behind Spilt's culinary approach to mocktails, and why she thinks the word "mocktail" deserves a lot more respect than it gets.

An Accidental Path

Joanne describes her entry into the non-alc space as pure accident. In the early days of the pandemic, freshly sober and with evenings suddenly stretching out ahead of her, she started boiling down whatever was in the house into syrups and potions, drawing on years of foraging experience. What began as elaborate, ridiculously complicated drink experiments (complete with miniature dioramas staged on ice) eventually became the foundation for her first two recipe books.

Those early books, by her own admission, were "way too complicated." Friends bought them out of loyalty but rarely made anything from them. Still, the creative exercise became her calling card. A quieter, more personal project followed: Dry Spell, a coloring book she spent 18 months illustrating and writing, where she first opened up about sobriety beyond the world of mocktails. It's a project she still hasn't fully made peace with promoting, tucked away in a box in her basement rather than on Spilt's shelves.

Before Spilt, Joanne spent two and a half years in manufacturing, helping pivot a beverage company's bitters division toward non-alcoholic products. It taught her a lot about shelf life, distribution, and formulation, but she was candid about what she learned most: manufacturing wasn't for her. Fresh ingredients give way to extracts and preservatives, and the process becomes, in her words, "point one percent creative and ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent SOPs." That realization helped shape what came next.

The Birth of Spilt

Spilt came together almost by accident too. A conversation about a bay in a new development got the idea of a brick-and-mortar space into Joanne's head, but rising construction costs and a wave of local restaurant closures during the Covid government loan repayment period made a big build-out feel too risky. Instead, she and her business partner found an adorable 300-square-foot sublease of a hair salon, intentionally bootstrapped to keep the stakes low.

That small footprint has become the whole point. Modeled loosely after the tiny bars Joanne encountered in Poland, Spilt seats up to sixteen people, needs only one bartender to run the room, and gives the team full creative freedom to build recipes as complicated as they want, without worrying about commercial shelf life. As Joanne put it, staying small gave her the room to be creative instead of "playing to what you think people like instead of what you want to make."

A Culinary Approach, Not a Swap-In Replacement

One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was how Spilt approaches drink development. Rather than starting from a classic cocktail and substituting in a zero-proof spirit, Joanne and her team build drinks the way a chef builds a dish, starting from flavour and balance rather than a swapped ingredient.

She gave a great example: a customer recently asked for a whiskey sour made without her usual go-to spirit. Substituting a different zero-proof whiskey produced what she called an "undrinkably disgusting" result. Simply grabbing a bottle off the back bar and dropping it into a classic recipe doesn't automatically work; it takes testing and rebalancing, which is part of why non-alcoholic drinks sometimes get an undeserved bad reputation.

Instead, Spilt's menu is often inspired by food first. A drink on the current menu started as a Yemeni table condiment made with cardamom, parsley, jalapeño, cilantro, and lemon. A local bakery's blackberry-sesame pastry became a shrub. Joanne's argument is a compelling one: if you challenged a restaurant's kitchen staff to a blind mocktail competition against the bar staff, judged purely on flavour, the kitchen might win.

Defending the Word "Mocktail"

Terminology came up as a genuine point of principle for Joanne. As the beverage industry increasingly pushes terms like "zero-proof cocktail," she pushed back on the idea that "mocktail" needs retiring. Her reasoning centers on inclusivity: many of her customers, including those who don't drink for religious or cultural reasons, aren't steeped in cocktail culture and don't necessarily want a drink that tastes like alcohol at all. For them, “zero-proof cocktail" isn't a comfortable or familiar term, while "mocktail" is.

She shared a story about catering Muslim weddings, where guests unfamiliar with cocktail terminology just want simple, comfortable language, not industry jargon. Her broader point is that the non-alc movement should be careful not to build itself around impressing cocktail enthusiasts at the expense of the much wider group of people it's meant to serve.

On the flip side, she was equally clear-eyed about drinks that taste too close to the real thing. She recounted an unsettling experience at a restaurant where a mocktail tasted so authentic she suspected there had been a mix-up, and the discomfort that moment created for her as a sober guest. It's a reminder that walking the line between "convincing" and "comfortable" takes real thought, and real communication with guests.

Building a Safe and Inclusive Space

Community runs through everything Joanne talked about. Spilt has intentionally supported the queer and trans community, both through staffing and through sponsorships like the upcoming Dragfest, offering a space where people don't have to navigate the unpredictability that can come with a room full of drinking strangers. She also spoke about younger customers and family events at the bar, and about her own mentors, particularly the entrepreneurial grit passed down from her mother and grandmother, as shaping how she approaches the inevitable hard days that come with running a small business.

What's Next for Spilt

Spilt is heading into its busy event season, offering tastings, classes, and curated multi-course drink menus both in the bar and off-site. Joanne teased an upcoming class built around the idea of "drinkable salads," inspired by a wedge of blue cheese that became an unexpectedly delicious syrup.

You can find Spilt on Instagram, through their website, and via their newly-launched Substack, where Joanne is just getting started sharing more of her writing.

On the Wagon Podcast covers the non-alcoholic drinks movement, sobriety, and sober-curious living in Canada. Subscribe for more conversations with the people building this community.