We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Megan Brown. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Megan below.

Megan, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

When we first came up with the idea for a craft soda business we knew that we wanted a name that would be unique and catch potential customers attention. After a lot of brainstorming came a name that highlights where we are from and what we do with a little but of nostalgia and humor mixed in, Waynesville Soda Jerks.

One of our top questions is “what is a soda jerk?”. The term “soda jerk” first came about in the 1940’s – 50’s from those who worked at soda counters, typically located drugstores. The employees that were working at the soda counters would dispense soda water, to be mixed with flavors syrups, by using a jerking motion on the draft tap handles. Eventually folks began to call these soda counter workers Soda Jerks and the term began to spread. It became more popular in the 50’s with growth of youth enjoying soda shops and casual diners.

The Waynesville part of our name is pretty straightforward as my partner Chris and myself (both Co-Founders) are life long natives to Haywood County. NC where Waynesville is the county seat and where we started our business.

We occasionally have some older folks come to our gift shop and joyfully share that they have fond memories of being “Soda Jerks” when they were teenagers. For those who are unaware of the historical term “Soda Jerks” they simply find our name humorous and think that we just call our selves “Jerks” for fun. We definitely play up the humorous side of this name and have some merchandise that says things like “Don’t be Jerk…Grab a Waynesville Soda” and we playfully have our staff titles as “Jerks” and our call our children ” the Little Jerks”.

We currently only offer our sodas by the packaged bottled but we have dreams and goals of one day expanding our brand to have a real diner and soda counter where we can put the name Waynesville Soda Jerks to more of its authentic use.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Waynesville Soda Jerks is an artisan beverage company based in the mountains of Western North
Carolina. We handcraft fruit-based bottled sodas made of high quality ingredients sourced from
small farms. We are a family run company, majority female owned, with an 80% female staff. Our
company began with the dream of sustaining and bettering our lives individually, while also creating
a brand that has lasting impact for our community. We strive to craft artisan sodas not only of the
highest quality but also with a purpose. Our mission is to connect our customers to the importance
of our local agricultural community and economy by sourcing our primary ingredients directly from
small farms throughout the Southern Appalachian region. We form partnerships for locally grown
ingredients including: apples, basil, blackberries, blueberries, chile peppers, concord grapes, ginger,
peaches, plums, raspberries, rosemary, rhubarb and strawberries. It gives us immense pride to be
able to financially support and highlight the bounty that our agriculturally rich region has to offer. Not
only are we supporting fellow small businesses but we are also utilizing the best ingredients available
for our products. These quality ingredients provide us with opportunity to have distinctive soda
flavors not typically seen in the traditional soda market such as Apple Rosemary, Blueberry Basil and
Strawberry Rhubarb, to name a few. We are continually inspired and motivated by the unparalleled
work of our regional farmers, not only by feeding families but also providing for us to develop our
unique niche business with their beautiful fruits, vegetables and herbs.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

It is important to us to develop the Waynesville Soda Jerks brand with the mission of having lasting
impact on our community and region. We achieve this goal by directly creating jobs for the local
workforce as well as through our ingredient sourcing from local small farms. As mentioned
previously, each one of our 9 flavors features ingredients grown locally from our region such as
apples, berries, peaches, herbs, rhubarb, chile peppers, ginger, and more. We are proud partners in
this local sourcing mission with the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP). ASAP’s goal
is “to help local farms thrive, link farmers to markets and supporters, and to build healthy
communities through connections to local food”. When we are seeking to form or expand
relationships with our produce suppliers ASAP is ready with a list of farmers in our area that have just
what we are looking for. Conversely, if a farmer has a product to move or wants to explore a new
offering, ASAP can guide them to a potential buyer. It is a win-win for all! The farmers are able to
have a bit more security and diversity for the market for their crops and we producers have direct
access to the freshest, highest quality ingredients available. For example, one of our most popular
flavors is Strawberry Rhubarb Soda. It is an excellent balance of sweet, ripe strawberries and bright,
tart rhubarb and was inspired by the classic Southern “Strawberry Rhubarb Pie”. Both the strawberries
and rhubarb are sourced 100% directly from Western North Carolina Farms. Our 2025 batch includes
the following farm partners: Deal Family Farm in Franklin,NC, Leatherwood Farms in Canton,NC and NC KT’s Orchard and Apiary in Canton, NC

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

We were actually high school sweethearts. We began dating when I was Junior and when he was senior. We dated for a few years after high school and eventually broke up and went our separate ways. We honestly thought we would never see each other again! After both living in other areas of NC we happened to each come back to Western NC around the same time. We reconnected after all of those years and began dating again. We moved to Waynesville together and both worked at the same restaurant where he was a cook and I was a server. During this time we decided that we wanted to try our hand at entrepreneurship and we began brainstorming business ideas. This is how Waynesville Soda Jerks came into existence. We were shoppers at our local farmers market and noticed a void in the market in that there were not any ready to drink products for shoppers to enjoy on hot days. We had the idea to start a simple farmers market booth selling hand mixed sodas and the rest is history! We have now been operating Waynesville Soda Jerks for 12 years and have added 2 “little Jerks” to the mix at home, 1 year old and 5 year old. We also have added a great team of “Jerks’ that help us run all aspects of our business and assist us with our goals of continuing to grow our brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.waynesvillesodajerks.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waynesvillesodajerks/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/waynesvillesodajerks