In most communities there's no longer much social stigma against going to a bar/pub and ordering non-alcoholic beverages. The latest non-alcoholic beers are actually pretty good. (I do understand that the environment itself can be difficult for recovering alcoholics.)
I used to go out not-drinking with my coworkers (I've been a teetotaler my entire life). The place we went to had free refills for sodas so I downed half a dozen glasses of Fanta while my coworkers were paying $3-$5 a beer. Seems ridiculous to me how much people pay for alcohol.
A bunch of places now have "mocktails" which are just cocktails without alcohol so you can one up your alcoholic friends by spending $3-5 per glass of sugar water.
Some portion of alcohol prices are a barrier to entry to create the desired crowd. You might not want to attract the type of person looking to get shitfaced for cheap. Usually, non alcoholic non tap water is not way cheaper, especially if it is a “mocktail”.
Of course, some portion is also high rents. And I have never seen a restaurant or bar outside of Costco with free refills for anything other than tap water though.
Lots of places around me have free refills on fountain soft drinks and tea. In fact, it is pretty rare for a restaurant to not have free refills on things like sodas. Something fancier like a craft lemonade or whatever wouldn't have free refills though.
This is true for a lot of the places I travel to within the US as well.
I've been to Patchogue, Montreal, Toronto, Cleavland, Myrtle Beach, Rehoboth, Baltimore, Louisville, Indianapolis, Nashville, Kansas City, Houston, Austin, Taos, Denver, Chicago, and a few other cities in the past couple of years. The majority of restaurants I visited had free refills for fountain drinks. The biggest places that I went to that didn't have free refills were places like food stands and what not, but that's expected.
But if you have to pay an expensive entry into that space, you will naturally limit who will go there and how often. And I do not just means "excludes people who get shitfaced". I mean "excludes people who are conscious about spending money or simply do not have super high salaries".
while there are clearly cash grabs by the industry, the money for drinks goes towards the bar's rent/staff, so going there and not spending any money doesn't help the establishment's continued existence. depending on the establishment, that may or may not be a concern.
