The countdown is on. Carl Radke has finally revealed Soft Bar + Café’s official opening date.
“August 27 is gonna be a grand opening to friends and family,” he said in the July 30 episode of The Julia Cunningham Show. “And then September 5 to the public.”
How Carl Radke’s non-alcoholic concept bar came to be
The Summer House cast member dropped the big news roughly two years after he began teasing the non-alcoholic concept bar. Carl touched on the idea in Summer House Season 8, saying he was interested in opening a sports bar that promoted “mindful conception” — a practice that aligned with his ongoing sobriety journey.
“Starting a sober sports bar probably isn’t a great idea right now,” he admitted in an episode interview. “But a bar and a cafe that serves coffee, functional drinks, has an experience — that’s a better idea… But I didn’t immediately have that. Her reaction actually led me to where I’m at now.”
Carl Radke shares details on Soft Bar’s brick-and-mortar: “I got really lucky”
Carl has since spent a lot of time and money establishing the Soft Bar brand through various pop-up events across New York City. He has also been hard at work completing the bar’s brick-and-mortar, which he initially planned to open in early 2025.
“I got really lucky. It’s going to be a really beautiful space,” Carl recently told Julia Cunningham. “Now, it’s a first-generation space. I had to build it out — plumbing, electrical.
“But I looked at other spaces,” he continued. “I looked at Starbucks. Funny story, I go look at this Starbucks with a broker. True story… He brings me to this Starbucks in Williamsburg, and that Starbucks location was closed. And I said to him, verbatim, I go, ‘Why is Starbucks leaving?’ He looks at me and goes, ‘Bro, nobody drinks Starbucks in Williamsburg.’”
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At that moment, Carl realized just how much the Brooklyn community valued local businesses. While the vacant Starbucks space was already equipped with the necessary plumbing and electrical installations, Carl knew it wasn’t where Soft Bar belonged.
“I didn’t want to take over what was perceptually a Starbucks,” he explained. “But guess what? Is there some adjacent comparison to Starbucks? Absolutely. I believe my concept is more aligned in a Starbucks realm than it is in, like, a cocktail bar.”
Carl Radke explains what sets Soft Bar apart from other coffee shops
Carl noted that many NYC coffee shops close in the late afternoon or early evening, which will allow Soft Bar to fill a void.
“What we’re doing is the coffee and the non-alc culture, but extending that into the evening,” he said. “Every coffee shop in this town, for the most part, closes at five or six o’clock, but you have a space that sits there that’s beautiful and cool… I took over this space — I didn’t get this space until January. We started building in March.”
Carl also said the bar, located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, would be dog- and kid-friendly “at certain hours.”
Learn more about Carl’s Soft Bar and its months-long renovation process.
