ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Megan Brown and Chris Allen are partners in business and life. 

What You Need To Know

  • Waynesville Soda Jerks is a craft soda company based out of Waynesville, N.C.

  • The business started out at a farmer’s market and now serves their soda to 150 locations in western North Carolina

  • Cranberry ginger soda will be available mid-November for the holiday season

Today at Waynesville Soda Jerks, they’re bottling strawberry rhubarb soda. 

The process starts out with sanitizing glass bottles and putting them on the line.

“The soda coming through the line, comes down through these tubes, fills and caps. It’ll eventually come off of this other side, fully capped, rinsed and onto the labeler,” Brown said.

They started their business hand-mixing syrups and soda water at a farmer’s market. The name "soda jerk" is an old term and comes from a time when soda was dispensed by jerking a tap handle to pour the drink.

“We didn’t know anything about soda, and I actually purchased a soda stream for our home, and we just started playing around with it and thought why don’t we start a small craft soda booth,” Brown said.

Ten years later, that booth is now a business that serves soda in 150 locations in Western North Carolina.

They used to bottle their soda by hand with a manual filler, and it would take 2 weeks to make 17 cases. Now they can do it in 5-10 minutes. “We really just taught ourselves along the way,” Brown said.

Supporting local agriculture is important to the owners, which is why they source local ingredients from the southern Appalachian region. “This is fresh ginger from a farm in Bernardsville, North Carolina,” Brown said.

Waynesville Soda Jerks sells average flavors like concord grape and peach, and special flavors like lavender lemon and blackberry serrano soda. 

“This is one of our most unique flavors,” Brown said. “It has spicy peppers in it. It’s sort of a love it or hate it flavor.” 

They say what also makes this drink tasty is as simple as their water.

“We’re really lucky to have such fresh water in Haywood County. A lot of business that are in the beverage industry such as us in large municipalities who have to purchase water in, in large tanks to get the quality of water that we just have that comes straight out of the tap,” Brown said.

After the bottles are filled, the team taste tests the batch.

“We all taste it and make sure that the taste is right, and the carbonation level is where we want it,” Brown said.