As more young people reject alcohol, bars serving a botanical drink called kava are exploding across the country.

Kava is a ceremonial drink from the South Pacific made by grinding the roots of the Piper methysticum shrub into a powder and mixing it with water or coconut milk. Even though it's known to taste like muddy water, it has rapidly increased in popularity because of its reputation for easing stress and muscle tension while producing a feeling of mild sedation. 

The number of kava bars in the U.S. has more than doubled in the past three years, from 303 in 2023 to roughly 700 today, according to HappyKava, a mobile app that tracks kava bars. 

But even as they proliferate across strip malls and retail districts, many of their business models are at risk of being upended because the term "kava bar" is somewhat of a misnomer. 

“I can guarantee you that the majority of [kava bars'] sales are kratom drinks,” said Phil Peterson, the owner of Votanik Kava Bar in Miami.

Between 60% and 70% of Votanik’s sales actually come from drinks made with kratom, Peterson said. The substance has been drawing heavy scrutiny from health experts and state regulators because its production is unregulated and it carries a significant risk of addiction.

Derived from the leaves of a Southeast Asian tree, kratom is often marketed as a natural herbal supplement for energy or pain relief. 

But it has been banned in several states. Concentrated, synthetic kratom products are often sold in convenience stores, marketed as wellness drinks. Because they interact with opioid receptors in human brains and have been tied to hundreds of overdoses, the products are often called "gas station heroin."  

“The reason why everybody calls it a kava bar and not a kratom bar is because … kratom's got such a bad reputation,” Peterson said. “Nobody calls it a kratom bar, because Google will throttle you.”

Kava and kratom are two different botanicals that have risen in popularity despite having long been available in the U.S. Neither is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Drug Enforcement Agency has listed kratom as a “drug of concern.”

While kava promotes feelings of calmness, reduces anxiety and relaxes the muscles, kratom is known to increase physical energy and alertness with a mild sense of euphoria. Even though experts stress that kratom shouldn't be mixed with other substances, kava bars frequently offer customers both products, and in some cases encourage the mixture.

“Although it is rare, we see people, especially those with a prior substance use disorder, then developing a potential dependence on the combination, and it seems to be that kratom is primarily the driving force behind that,” said Oliver Grundmann, a University of Florida College of Pharmacy professor who has studied both kratom and kava.

Roots

Jeffrey Bowman is often credited with opening the first U.S. kava bar when he launched an alcohol-free social lounge in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2002. By 2019, the number of kava bars in the country had grown to 178, according to HappyKava CEO German Calas.

A decrease in alcohol consumption and an increasing focus on wellness are among the leading factors driving growth toward kava bars. 

Because of the lack of regulation — and the many different forms the substances take — quantifying current sales figures is difficult. The global kava and kratom market in 2025 has been estimated at anywhere from $500M to $2.6B.

An estimated 1.7 million Americans aged 12 and older used kratom in 2021, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Calas, who identifies the concepts through Google Maps, Yelp and social media and verifies them by calling or visiting the establishments, said in an email that Florida has the highest concentration of kava bars today, with 446. 

Many are open by 8 a.m. and stay open past midnight. Some promote social gathering with gaming consoles, live shows and events, and movie and karaoke nights. Many patrons even use them as a coworking space.

In addition to drawing traffic to properties at all hours, kava bars can also be an easy tenant for a landlord

Kava bars often don’t need a kitchen or specific licenses to operate, which makes them faster to open than bars or restaurants, said Claire Hertel, a managing broker with Hoff & Leigh in Colorado.

Hertel represented the landlord in a lease with Denver Café and Kava earlier this year and said her client was attracted to the shop’s less-intensive use of the second-generation restaurant space rather than putting in another full-service eatery.

“It doesn't require a whole lot of overhaul of kitchen requirements and kitchen infrastructure,” Hertel said.

“Just the maintenance of all that stuff is primarily a really big expense, and since kava bars seem to not have that, they kind of need a separate food preparation and storage space, but it's not super heavy on an active kitchen all the time,” she added. “I think it can be more attractive to landlords.”

The landlord wasn’t all that familiar with the concept of kava bars, but once the tenant was able to educate them on kava and kratom, he was most worried about the business model, Hertel said.

Native Realty founder Jaime Sturgis has worked on a handful of kava bar deals in Fort Lauderdale. He said landlords have been a bit more skeptical as more and more kava bar tenants pop up looking for space.

Native Realty has received “a lot of calls” for potential kava bar tenants, but his clients are taking a more hands-on approach to decipher what has long-term viability and what doesn’t.

“A lot of them are new,” Sturgis said. “Some of them are like passion projects, where they don't necessarily have a fully baked business plan or strong financials, so a lot of it is also getting to like the concepts that have more of a track record.”

Crackdown

While kava is unregulated and not FDA-approved, it has a longer track record in the U.S. as a dietary supplement than kratom, Grundmann said.

Kratom is made by crushing or powdering the leaves of a Southeast Asian tropical tree. The botanical, which has a bitter taste but is more appealing than kava, acts as a stimulant, giving consumers a boost of energy and alertness in lower doses. 

In higher doses, it acts like an opioid by binding to the same opioid receptors in the brain as prescribed painkillers like oxycodone.

Regular use can lead to both physical and psychological dependence. Using kratom with kava can also increase dependence on the duo together, Grundmann said.

The substance has gained attention for recent uses steering away from customary practice and into high-potency extracts sold as powders or capsules in gas stations, smoke shops, corner stores and online.

While these products are marketed as kratom, they are synthetic, unlike many of the drinks offered in kava bars, Grundmann said.

Between 2015 and 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that kratom exposures reported to the National Poison Data System increased by roughly 1,200% and reached record levels in 2025. In that time, there were 233 kratom-related deaths, and while most of these deaths involved other substances, kratom was the only drug detected in 21% of those fatalities.

In response, more and more states are looking to ban it or heavily regulate it.

Eight states — Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, Vermont, Wisconsin and Connecticut — fully ban kratom as a controlled substance or otherwise prohibited product, according to Restoration Recovery. Other states have restricted the sale of kratom with age limits or have introduced bills to ban it.

The increased focus on regulation has trickled down to local municipalities as well. New York City cracked down on kava bars last year after a New York state judge ruled that kava is to be treated as an unapproved food additive.

In Florida, city of Doral officials passed an ordinance last year banning kava and kratom establishments within 500 feet of K-12 public, private or charter schools, places of worship, public parks or playgrounds, another kava or kratom establishment and any government-owned property.

Grundmann said he believes any products beyond the natural leaf should be banned and labeling requirements should be more straightforward.

But overall, he said the substance should be behind the counter and in the hands of a trained professional.

“Now, I understand that some people might not be in favor of that because they want to have access and consume kratom together with kava bars,” Grundmann said. “I think that the kava bars that are currently operating, to my knowledge, are not really altering the composition of kava root that much, but clearly, kratom seems to be the primary driving force for causing potential adverse outcomes and dependence.”

Despite the growing list of concerns around kratom, it hasn’t slowed down kava bars — and most don't discuss the risk of their products with their customers.

'The Wild, Wild West'

Warm lighting, a sweet aroma, lo-fi music and deep-seated couches are all staples of a kava bar. Some have Dungeons & Dragons play tables, pool tables and old-school gaming machines, while others are full of high-tops and have a stage dedicated to live events. 

Many patrons bring their laptops and sprawl out across the bar for hours on end, chatting with peers and occasionally raising a cup with a milky brown liquid, called a kava shell, while cheering “bula,” a Fijian toast for wishes of good health and life.

Menus can span pages, listing various coffee drinks, mocktails and kava drinks.

But despite the number of kratom-based drinks on their menus, many that Bisnow visited over the past month rarely market products as “kratom,” and if they do, it's fairly limited.

Instead, some menus reference the color of kratom’s leaves — white, green and red. Another term used to refer to kratom is “k-tea,” popularized on social media as the platforms started restricting content related to kratom.

Without stricter rules on how kratom is sold and described, transparency is left to individual operators. While tighter regulation could mean the banning of kratom altogether, it could also mean making the space safer and more trustworthy. 

“Typically, I'm not into too much government regulation, but I will say that the kava industry, or the kratom industry, actually more, has been kind of like the wild, wild west,” Peterson said. “So I've actually welcomed a lot of this stuff.”

While the industry rides the demand wave, the expansion is coinciding with growing scrutiny of kratom — which is facing federal and state crackdowns due to the lack of consistent dosing and quality control and its association with adverse effects and fatalities.

The dynamic has left operators navigating a fast-changing regulatory landscape, while landlords are looking at how dependent the businesses are on kratom as scrutiny of the substance grows.

“Landowners typically want to see not an overreliance on kratom, especially if the law has changed, because obviously that materially affects the business model,” Sturgis said.

“I think kava has been kind of the staple. It's been around for a very long time, and kratom is kind of new on the scene,” Sturgis said. “I think there may be some legislation that may get rid of that. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.”