Hi everyone. My small 20 seat cafe should be opening in about 6 weeks. I'm primarily selling a large variety of grilled cheese sandwiches, milk shakes, fries, coffee and pastries. Basically, it's upscale retro food. Keeping with that concept, I'd like to carry out of the ordinary sodas. This is not my forte though, and I was hoping to get some ideas. I hear a lot about Henry Weinhard, but have no idea how to get in touch with a distributor. Thanks for any advice.

contact a miller distributor in your area for Hweinhards.

some of the east coast guys can give you better availability on other sodas, but you are on the right path!

maybe try that new sprecher soda line from milwaukee...

you can always buy flavored extracts to add in the soda's.

If you are in New Jersey you should serve Boylans.

Yes, by all means, carry Boylan's, Frostie, or Whooppee. Gray's & Capt'n. Eli's Root Beer are also great. Sprecher has a pretty good RB & Cream Soda, but their Ginger Ale made me gag, & their Orange Cream is not best in class.

Many thanks for all of the responses.

I know and love Boylan, but since I'm located nearby, a lot of other places carry it and I wouldn't be so different. However, the economics of it might persuade me.

Henry Weinhard seems a tough nut to crack and I have a feeling there's no distributor here in NJ. I've gone through a bureaucratic maze with Miller and still haven't gotten very far -- like no one seems to even know of HW's existence. But I'm still trying.

I also considered Moxie, but there's no distributor that delivers here. I'd have to drive an hour to get it. Is it worth it?

What about Hank's? There's a possibility I can get a distributor to deliver to me.

And Jones? That is readily available.

Last, and I like this idea a whole lot - there's a company, Forest Park Premium Beverage (no website), that does private labeling and makes a lot of claims about their soda. Sounded good on the phone plus I'd love to have my own label on the bottle. They're shipping me samples. Has anyone heard of them?.

Boy, this is a lot of work, but a lot of fun too.

Originally posted by gsusser:
I also considered Moxie, but there's no distributor that delivers here. I'd have to drive an hour to get it. Is it worth it?

Don't make Moxie your only soda. It has a unique taste, kinda like motor oil and creosote with a touch of Massingel. You will either love it or hate it.

Don't waste your time with Hanks or Jones... not only is that stuff sold in junky places but it's really blah blah.

You want HWeinhards and about 1100 different longneck sodas to choose from then you should order a mixed pallet of 72 sodas from Realsoda at
310 326 9202 x102. You could fill a truck container with all different cases if you're so inclined and most of them aren't available anywhere else in NJ. Oh yeah... and they're really good too!