We were lucky to catch up with Ryan & Jennifer Eaton recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ryan & Jennifer, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The summer of 2016 was spent in a tank of a minivan, chasing as many national park sites as we could for the NPS Centennial. We followed some friends to Polebridge, MT, a speck of a town on a dirt road leading to the little known northwest entrance to Glacier NP. Before our first night was over, we had secured jobs at the saloon for the rest of the summer season. That night would set the pattern for the rest: swapping stories and dreams with our coworkers over huckleberry Moscow mules followed by a chilly walk back to our van under the most incredible night sky one can only find in the wildest of places. However, our idyllic life soon ended as a host of problems at home called us back across the country to Florida. The whiplash from the abrupt lifestyle switch had us both feeling extremely despondent. Trying to keep the van life spirit alive, we made a few attempts at drinking mules under the stars, but they never seemed quite right. Maybe it was the missing camaraderie, or no longer having a constant dose of mountain air, or maybe it was because we couldn’t find a comparable ginger beer to the brand used at the saloon. We could definitely could fix one of those things. With some old home brew equipment and our beloved juicer, we made 5 gallons of ginger beer that tasted amazing but looked like the Mississippi River after a hurricane. We toted that keg of ginger beer to every gathering of friends until it was gone and then we went back to the lab to refine the next 5 gallons. We did this enough times that our friends at bars and restaurants were telling us they would sell our ginger beer if we actually packaged it. We connected with a friend who owned a coffee shop that agreed to let us use their space after hours, we got licensed, and sold our ginger beer to four wholesale customers that first time. We began doing markets and expanding our wholesale program which led to demands for more flavors and suddenly we realized we had birthed a soda company and it was way more than just a side hustle. We regained a sense of freedom that had been lost with our return home as well as a established a major creative outlet for ourselves.
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?
We started Big Jerk Soda Co. because we wanted the best ginger beer for a Moscow Mule. Such a niche purpose doesn’t lend itself to much longevity, so we built upon the framework of what made that first soda so successful: bold flavors and fresh, simple ingredients. Six years later, we are still using nothing but real juices, cane sugar, and filtered water for our fruit sodas. As we have expanded into more traditional fountain flavors and seltzer waters, we have chosen all natural extracts to maintain that dedication to quality ingredients and real flavors. This foundation has set us apart from national soda brands and even what some call “craft” sodas, though we feel our business, and the few small soda companies modeled like ours, is truly creating craft beverages. Historically, bottled sodas were packaged and distributed within the same city for decades before larger brands emerged and national distribution ended this model. Every one of our glass bottles says “made with love in Pensacola, FL” on the label because we are proud to return to the roots of the soda industry not just in our own city, but across the country.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
Ryan has a background in culinary arts as well as homebrewing beer. We used his old keg and CO2 tank to carbonate that first batch or ginger beer. There’s not really a ton of information about how to make soda or what equipment to use, but there is a wealth of information and equipment for making beer. As our demand has grown over the years, we’ve essentially scaled with beer equipment despite the fact that there’s no fermentation in our process. We’ve picked the brains of many of our local brewers about equipment and carbonation and just about everything but beer. Gathering all this intel has obviously benefited our own expansion, but now we are using our knowledge to help other local beverage companies either establish their own manufacturing processes or manufacture their product for them. We pride ourselves on manufacturing and distributing our product locally without having to outsource to a distant copacker, and now we are extending this benefit to other businesses in our community by becoming a local option for copacking.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
It’s difficult to come up with one big story of a pivot because owning your own business means constant pivoting by varying degrees. We may have to pivot one week because a certain soda flavor sold more than anticipated and if we don’t redo our production schedule, we won’t have that flavor available. Once rather than wasting an entire batch of soda, we had a special run of labels made to advertise the addition of too much lemon juice. As we have grown, the day to day pivots, or even big mistake correcting pivots, come more naturally, but in those early days, they were a question of survival even if they would feel insignificant if they happened now.
Contact Info:
- Website: Bigjerksoda.com
- Instagram: Bigjerksoda
Image Credits
Brooke Frausto Marissa Hebert Blake Jones Chris Vargas Nathan Dillaha