The modern American zero-proof drink did not begin with the nonalcoholic spirits category. Its techniques, formats and even its service style descend from the drugstore soda fountain.
What the fountain actually was
The soda fountain was a service counter with carbonated water on tap, a rack of house-made syrups and an operator trained to combine them to order.
It sat inside a pharmacy, which put the drinks alongside tonics and extracts and gave the format a vocabulary borrowed from compounding.
Crucially it was staffed. The drink was made in front of the customer by someone with a technique, which is the arrangement a cocktail bar uses.
Why syrups became the core skill
With carbonation supplied by the tap, everything distinguishing one drink from another lived in the syrup, so fountains developed deep syrup ranges.
Those syrups carried fruit, spice, root and bark flavors, extracted and sweetened in house, which is precisely the work a zero-proof bar does today.
The habit of building flavor in advance and assembling quickly at service also survives. It is the same production logic a busy bar still uses.
How prohibition entrenched the format
When alcohol sales were banned nationally, the fountain absorbed much of the social function of the bar and expanded rapidly in American towns.
Bartenders moved behind fountain counters, bringing shaking, straining and garnishing habits with them into a nonalcoholic setting.
The category that emerged was not an imitation of cocktails but a parallel craft with its own repertoire, which is why so many fountain drinks have no alcoholic equivalent.
Why the tradition faded and then returned
Bottled and canned soft drinks made the made-to-order fountain uneconomic, and the counters disappeared as pharmacies changed shape through the second half of the century.
What replaced them was a bottled product with a fixed recipe, which removed the operator and with them the possibility of a drink built for one guest.
The current zero-proof movement essentially restores that operator, and it has rediscovered many fountain techniques independently along the way.
What carried over into the current menus
Phosphate acid, once a fountain staple, has returned to American bars as a way of adding a dry, mineral sharpness that citrus cannot supply.
Shrubs, cordials and cream builds all trace back through the same counter, as does the practice of finishing a drink with soda from a gun or siphon.
The clearest inheritance is the assumption that a nonalcoholic drink deserves technique. That idea was normal at the fountain long before it returned to bars.