Feel the Fizz: Discover five soda pop producers in our state.
John Steinbeck described the Mother Road, Route 66, as “the road of flight,” its travelers searching for a better life. What once seemed foundational and eternal was eventually replaced; Highway 40 took over as the primary route. Yet Route 66 lingers in the American mind; there’s even a soda brand called Route 66, but since that brand is located in another state, we’ll not dwell on it.
Simple soda has its antecedents too; the first big brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola were launched only a few decades before Route 66 was built. They were created derived from other previous iterations, just as Route 66 followed older trails. The first colas were medicinal beverages, much as the well-known brands later purported, based upon a colonial beverage that the Spanish called quina-kola. There were various versions, but they all had two critical ingredients: quinine, a tree bark known for centuries to guard against malaria, and kola nut, rich with caffeine.
An enterprising American pharmacist in 1886 pumped up the caffeine in this drink by adding coca leaves (from which cocaine is derived), and Coca-Cola was born.
The bubbles in such sodas are part of the formula, but here too the groundwork had been laid much earlier: the soda fountain was invented a century earlier, and adding carbon dioxide bubbles to a drink was seen as healthy, as well as being reminiscent of more established sparkling beverages like beer and
champagne.
Unsurprisingly, success begets imitators, and “soda” exists in a million iterations, though most have varying levels of caffeine, if only in homage to the originals of the business. Missouri has its own history with soda brands, like Polly’s Pop in Independence. This soda was started in 1923, three years before Route 66’s founding, and lasted till 1967. The soda was relaunched in 2016. Vess sodas are even older, founded in St. Louis in 1916 and going strong today. (As a side note, there is a large replica of a Vess soda bottle that is worth seeing; it is a protected landmark, located near the Gateway Arch.)
You’ll work a bit harder to find Calvin’s 1836 Barrel-Style Root Beer, based in historic Hermann since 2011. It’s a damn fine version of this once ubiquitous sassafras-flavored and exceedingly complex brew. Also, Ozark Mountain Bottleworks in Branson has a Butter Beer (really, it tastes more like caramel) that represents Missouri, even if it’s south of the famed highway.
Perhaps best known among Missouri soda makers is Fitz’s, producers of exemplary root beer and so much more, situated in St. Louis. Sassafras root is rarely employed these days, since other flavorings can provide the required earthy intensity without the health questions that have come to surround sassafras root. Even without it, Fitz’s root beer doesn’t lack for richness.
Missouri’s unique heritage in beer surely has inspired many beverage makers. And with so many cars traveling along Route 66 once upon a time, offering a refreshing soda must have seemed like easy money.
Nearly a century later, the intrepid few soda makers who have remained are, we can presume, the best of those who were once proven along Historic Route 66.
The column was originally printed in the February 2026 issue of Missouri Life.
