Although the term “dirty soda” has picked up steam in recent years via social media and popular TV shows, the idea is not new.
The Utah-based Swig has been in the business of customized beverages for 14 years, and investors took notice years ago. Savory Fund purchased the chain in 2018 and then sold a majority interest to the Larry H. Miller Company in 2022.
Franchisees are buying into the growing appeal too. While dirty sodas may not be a recently created concept, the frequent news around it as of late (Hulu’s “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City”) has helped fuel historic unit growth. Swig began 2024 with 61 locations, but ended with more than 100.
“I think it’s important to understand that we’re not really creating demand for refreshing beverages,” says Swig CEO Alex Dunn. “There are hundreds of millions of people that have a soft drink or refreshing beverage every day. What we’re doing though is we allow our customers to have that [personalization]. We feel like we’ve been instrumental in creating that trend, and we intend to take it nationwide and allow customers to come and have a personalized refreshing beverage close to wherever they live.”
Swig has a product development team that’s always experimenting with new flavor profiles and combinations. Four times a year, the chain will release a suite of unique seasonal drinks. Some winter menu products include the Alpine Avalanche ( blended Dr Pepper, toffee crunch, Almond Roca, caramel sauce, and vanilla cream) and Mistletoe Madness (water, sugar-free vanilla, cranberry, fresh lemon, and strawberry puree). In the summer, the chain offered dragon fruit and in the fall it had cinnamon.
The brand is in the process of opening its own facility to develop proprietary flavor profiles.
“It’s so we will really, really be vertically integrated and be able to control that all the way from ideation to pouring it into a cup at each one of our stores,” Dunn says.
FiiZ Drinks was born in Utah as well. The 75-unit chain was founded in 2014 by two families that had a passion for making specialty sodas.
The brand is working on a menu optimization plan to determine what’s selling and what’s not and make sure it’s highlighting the most favorable drink combinations. There are plenty of options to choose from, whether it is water-based, soda-based, or energy drink-based. And nothing is beyond imagination; as of early December, the chain was testing Fairlife protein shakes with Diet Coke.
“Some things on social media are quick and they come and they go pretty fast,” says FiiZ president Scott Ball. “But we are actually testing to see if this is something that’s got some legs behind it long term. But what’s really cool about what we do is we’re always creating new drinks, and to be honest, a lot of our customers will create drinks for us. Eighty percent of our menu, believe it or not, is our custom drinks. They’re not directly off of our menu board. So as we start to see things become popular as we look at our data, we definitely can work to grow from that standpoint.”
The majority of units are based in Utah, but the company has made a significant push outside of the state in recent years. Some notable locations include Washington state; Las Vegas; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Tucson, Arizona. The goal is to continue to grow through the Midwest and Southeast, which is a large soda consumption market, according to Ball.
It helps that FiiZ knows its target audience.
“The soda trend has definitely been popular among the younger generations, specifically teens and young adults,” Ball says. “They’ve become, especially in our stores, social gathering spots. People are hanging out with friends. The soda shop definitely has a playful, fun vibe to it. It definitely resonates with the younger consumers and customers. We also, I would say, skew probably female as well.”
Cool Sips’ journey is quite different. The crafted soda concept was born in New York City last year—one inside the famous Rockefeller Center and another at the city’s Seaport district. The brand is able to pull three customer demographics—office workers who come down for a drink break but want something other than coffee, tourists walking nearby, and local Gen Z and millennial guests.
Keeping with NYC’s spirit, the chain launched late last year a collaboration with Broadway musical “Book of Mormon,” which garnered a lot of attention on social media. Additionally, to combat colder weather, Cool Sips rolled out Steamy Sips—its first venture into hot drinks. This comprises the Watch Hill (hot chocolate, peppermint, and vanilla cream) and the Kismet (apple cider, caramel, and sweet cream).
Despite the meteoric rise of the crafted soda segment, Cool Sips founder Andrew Moger admits he underestimated how much education was needed for NYC consumers.
“I thought that people had known more about it either through social media or just through traveling. That was not the case. So the bad news was that we had to educate people. The good news is that it led me to believe that there was a lot more upside,” Moger says. “If we’re just at the very beginning of this, there’s a lot of whitespace for growth in New York.”
Moger believes being first to market in NYC is a distinct advantage and will help the chain remain differentiated in the growing beverage space. As of December, Cool Sips was close to signing a lease for a third location and another one shortly thereafter. So by the summer, the brand should have four units. By the end of 2025, it should have six spots.
The restaurateur notes that more chains entering the fray isn’t necessarily a negative.
“I’m a firm believer generally that a rising tide raises all ships,” Moger says. “So the more people become familiar with dirty drinks or crafted drinks, then we’ll benefit from that. We have a lot of respect for the other brands that are doing it before us and we welcome people who are doing it.”