Here’s Why Soda Shops Will Always Have A Place In Every American’s Heart

It’s the classic scene you envision when you hear the words “soda shop.” These locales became the gathering-places of choice for teens in the 1930s and ’40s. With the jukebox blaring out the coolest music of the day and sweet drinks flowing from the taps on the bar, it’s not hard to imagine why.

So, the boys and the bobby-soxers – teenage girls who wore this particular kind of sock and fanatically chased their favorite pop artists of the ’40s – crammed into soda-shop booths. They didn’t just order fizzy drinks from the bar, though. The soda shop would typically draw them in with malts, milkshakes and sodas served with a dollop of ice cream on top.

It’s an idyllic image of American life in a bygone era, one for which people young and old feel nostalgic. But soda shops opened their doors long before they became the jukebox-blasting, milkshake-mixing destinations that we remember. In reality, the first soda fountains started serving up fizz nearly a century before they transformed into teenage hangouts in the 1930s and ’40s.

You may not know the history of the soda shop beyond this glorified image; how these outposts transformed over the years is quite shocking. And that ability to adapt and change might leave you wondering if they were able to survive life after jukeboxes and sock-hops lost their luster with the teenage crowd.

Before you go searching for a soda shop in town, let’s go on a journey through the history of this iconic American institution. Can you guess why they started, or how they grew to be so popular with mid-century Americans? Crack open a can of your favorite fizzy beverage, sit back and find out.

To start, we have to erase the idealized version of the sock-hopping soda shop from our minds. As we said before, the history of these stores traces back much further in history than 1930. And they didn’t offer customers a chance to hang out with friends and listen to music. Instead, they promised them healing.

The Victorian era saw people using drugs to cure their physical ailments for the first time. But the pharmacists behind the counter didn’t prescribe the tested and approved cures that we receive today. Instead, they doled out unregulated formulas – some of which are actually illegal substances today.

One constant element of human nature is that by and large none of us enjoy taking medicines that taste bad. So, Victorian pharmacists hit upon a clever way to make their remedies palatable – and perhaps even crave-worthy. Their solution? Installing soda fountains and mixing up healing, bubbly, flavored drinks.

At that time, soda fountains were a very new creation. People had long used naturally fizzy water to heal them from indigestion and tummy-related pains. But it wasn’t until 1813 that Samuel Fahnestock earned a patent for his soda pump. It sent carbonated water through a pump-powered spigot, its barrel hidden beneath the bar under which it was installed.

But pharmacists went further than just serving up plain old soda water. You may be able to guess what illegal substances they mixed into their barrels to help patrons feel better – one famously keeps people energized for hours on end. As for the still-legally-available ingredients used in Victorian sodas, you’d find caffeine, plant extracts and bromide, a common inclusion in asthma-fighting remedies.

Of course, the stimulant-laden sodas could pose a major problem for those who drank them for healing. They’d be likely to suffer from headaches once the active ingredient wore off, pushing them to return for more and more sodas. Pharmacists didn’t ward them off, either – as it turns out, they and other experts thought these now-illicit ingredients were great for patients’ health.

Everything changed for these pharmacists in 1914, when the Harrison Act became law in America. The government decided it was time to regulate opiates and some stimulants. Namely, they couldn’t be sold over the counter anymore, nor could they bubble up from soda fountains. So, what were the pharmacists to do without the key ingredients in their crowd-pulling fizzy drinks?

It took a bit of regrouping and rebranding, to be sure. But soda came back with a vengeance after its illegal substances had been stripped out. Those who poured these beverages had a new message for customers: our bubbly drinks taste delicious, even without any of those stimulants.

The Liquid Carbonic Company doled out sodas under the guiding hand of Jacob Baur, who invented carbon dioxide tanks in the late 1800s. According to the virtual Soderlund Drugstore Museum, his ads pitched soft drinks simply, saying, “It isn’t medicinal, won’t cure anything… isn’t intoxicating or habit-forming – it’s just flavory, fruity, snappy, sparkling, delicious.”

Soda fountains would have another stroke of good luck as they made the transition to stimulant-free beverages. In 1920 Congress pushed the Volstead Act into law, which made the production and sale of alcohol illegal across the country. This was the Prohibition era, and people needed something new to sip if not their favorite boozy tipples.

So, rather than cramming into a bar, Americans started gathering at the local soda fountain to mingle and have an alcohol-free beverage. On the other side of the counter stood the so-called soda jerks. Their nickname didn’t imply that they rudely served patients; instead, it was a reference to the way they had to yank the fountain’s handle to dispense the soda water.

Now, soda jerks had a tougher job than you might imagine, especially with today’s fountains in mind. Modern machines contain both carbonated water and syrup, which mix together as you fill your cup. At the start of the 20th century, though, this technology didn’t exist, so staffers had to transform their carbonated base into a flavorful drink themselves.

So, if you visited an early-20th-century soda fountain, you’d probably sit down at the counter in front of your soda jerk, most likely a teenage boy donning a bowtie and that bright white paper hat. He’d take your order and hand-mix the elements to create the flavor, pouring it over bubbly water and then passing it onto you.

At the most basic, the jerks would whip up flavored sodas, which combined a sweet syrup with the carbonated water on tap. Patrons could choose how they wanted their treat to taste, but the most popular flavors of the era were cherry, strawberry, root beer, cola and, oddly enough, chocolate.

The idea of a chocolate-flavored soda will become less strange when you hear more of what the jerks at the fountain could create. They didn’t limit themselves to syrupy sodas only – they had plenty of other add-ins with which they’d create their signature beverages. Keep in mind, too, that these staffers didn’t have a recipe book on hand. Instead, they memorized every option and whipped them up as the orders rolled in.

Let’s say the first person at the bar ordered a Lime Rickey. The soda jerk would layer freshly squeezed lime juice, simple syrup and a few dashes of Angostura Bitters into a glass. Then, he’d pour some soda water on top and push the glass to the customer.

Another person might ask for a Black Cow, arguably a bit more indulgent a beverage than the Lime Rickey. To prep this one, the soda jerk would pour chocolate sauce into the bottom of an extra-large glass. He’d then pour in a half-cup of root beer, stirring it up with the chocolate sauce. Next came a scoop of ice cream and another half-cup of the flavorful soda. But the pièce de résistance was the final scoop of ice cream, which the barman would balance on the rim of the glass.

The soda fountains had more than just soda on offer, of course. For one thing, most of them still existed within a pharmacy. So, you could pop in to pick up a prescription… And then find yourself with the perfect excuse to sit down for a refreshing drink or even a bite to eat.

In fact, drug stores found light bites as the perfect ploy to draw in customers around noon – lunchtime. They whipped up sandwiches and equally as light fare to go with the drinks that the jerks would make. On that note, they could mix fancy sodas, as well as milkshakes, malts and other ice cream-enhanced fizzy beverages.

Soda Fountain magazine – yet another clue as to how popular these outposts became – lauded the fact that they really did make Prohibition easier on people. A 1915 issue read, “The soda fountain of today is an ally of temperance… Ice cream soda is a greater medium for the cause of temperance than all the sermons ever preached on that subject.”

Of course, it wasn’t just former bar patrons heading to the soda shop – and this was especially true when they became the teenage hangout-of-choice in the 1930s, ’40s and even into the ’50s. After all, Prohibition ended in 1933, but fizzing fountains across the country continued thriving.

And here’s where the nostalgia is likely to kick in. You can picture the checkered black-and-white tiles on the floor giving way to swiveling stools planted into the ground. Above stands the marble-topped bar, off which the chrome fixtures reflect. And in one of the corners glows the jukebox, one of the major draws of the soda shop in this era.

Teenagers and even younger children would pop into the soda shop on their way home from school and hang there on the weekends, too. It was the perfect setting for a high-school date. Even those who weren’t going steady could enjoy the jukebox, which played pop music and later, the then-new genre of rock ’n’ roll.

In fact, musician Paul McGrane and lyricist Al Stillman commemorated the era’s affinity for soda fountains and their in-shop stereos in a tune called “Jukebox Saturday Night.” The song went, “Moppin’ up soda pop rickies to our hearts’ delight, Dancing to a swingeroo quickie, Jukebox Saturday night.”

On that note, you’ve probably seen this iteration of the soda shop in plenty of movies and TV shows. The classic musical Grease sees Rydell High School’s students gathering at Frosty Palace, the local malt shop. In one scene, Rizzo launches her milkshake into Kenickie’s mush – the work of a soda jerk gone to waste in an instant!

Similarly, the beloved TV show Happy Days – set in an idealized representation of 1950s America – had two main locations for all of its major events: the main character’s home or the local soda fountain. Even the mystery-solving gang on Scooby-Doo spend lots of shuttling in and out of a malt shop, with Shaggy and Scooby indulging in all of the classic fare on offer.

But for all of the good times had at the soda shop, both on screen and in real life, these hangouts didn’t keep crowds coming forever. Things started to change in the 1960s, when new kinds of eateries came to town: fast-food restaurants and drive-thrus, specifically.

On top of that, the soda shop’s offerings weren’t quite so special anymore, either. Manufacturers found a way to sell ice cream commercially, meaning people could get it much more easily. They could also buy bottled sodas and bring them home – no need to wait for a jerk to mix them up a drink.

But perhaps the greatest blow to the soda shop was the upgraded soda dispenser. Pharmacists no longer had to hire someone to mix drinks – or step away from the meds to prepare them for customers. Instead, machines would measure out the perfect amount of syrup and carbonated water with the press of a button.

Big-name soda brands, such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola, would provide their machinery to pharmacies for free, making it a no-brainer – no more slow-moving, manual preparation of sodas. Instead, the pharmacist would just have to hold a glass to the tap, turn the handle and pour.

This feat of engineering – combined with brilliant marketing by soda companies – allowed pharmacists to serve up sodas much more quickly. But it meant that every soda fountain had the same set of flavors on tap. No longer would soda jerks concoct drinks with multiple flavors, add-ins and dollops of ice cream.

As the Soderlund Drugstore and Pharmacy Museum’s website put it, “As wonderful as these soda dispensers were, they hastened the demise of the soda fountain. They contributed to the homogenization of drugstores.” But fortunately for those nostalgic for an old-fashioned beverage, they didn’t kill every last fountain out there.

Instead, retro soda shops with all of the nostalgic bells and whistles still dot the map of the United States. In Greenville, South Carolina, for example, a family soda fountain reopened in 2007, complete with an authentic marble soda fountain from 1949. Patrons can order sodas with freshly squeezed juices, handmade colas and root-beer floats, just as they were made by the jerks in the 1950s.

In other places, modern takes on the soda shop have cropped up, too. And patrons flock to them to try their favorite sodas with new flavors mixed in – does anyone want a cupcake-flavored Dr. Pepper? It may not be the traditional soda fountain, but it’s a nod to the counters that started it all.