Soft Drink Stops
Got kids in the car, Road Trips Foodies? Consider adding a soft drink museum or specialty store to your wanderings.
Belching is not encouraged at the Dr Pepper Museum, 300 South Fifth Street, Waco, Texas. It tells all about the pharmacist who developed and sold the first bottle in 1885. Yes, the soda pop is older than Coca-Cola and was celebrated at the 1904 World’s Fair Exposition in St. Louis. The museum includes a corner drug store, original bottling equipment and highlights of a collection that tops 100,000 soda-related items. Bonus: you can get a sample for 25¢.
Driving Route 66 and looking for refreshment? It’s hard to miss Pops, 660 West Highway 66, Arcadia, Oklahoma. It has a 66-foot-tall LED pop bottle out front. There’s a shake shop and a “soda ranch” where soda gurus guide visitors through a menu that includes more than 500 fizzy pink, green, orange, red, yellow and blue beverages – and every cola imaginable.
The Marietta Soda Museum, 109 Maple Street, Marietta, Ohio, is filled with all-things Coca-Cola, from equipment and advertising to memorabilia. Oh, yeah, there are a few Pepsi items too. And, everyone is welcome to belly up to the counter at the museum’s old-fashioned soda fountain.
More than 400 bottled sodas and beers are on the shelves of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop, 5702 York Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. Although there’s still a deli at the back of the store, John Nese has transformed his family’s Italian grocery store into a soda-guzzling mecca. Selections include colas and root beers, sarsaparillas, cream sodas, ginger beers, tonics laced with the essence of vanilla, flowers or espresso, Moxie and other old-time classics.
Then there’s the 800-pound gorilla: the World of Coca-Cola, 121 Baker Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia. A paradise for pop fans, the museum features Coke-related artifacts and memorabilia, an operating bottling line, an art gallery, a 3-D theater (with moving seats) and a tasting room where visitors can sample 60 different products.
(Photo courtesy of Dr. Pepper Museum)
