Jeremy Guenette was sitting in an Idaho parking lot waiting for his kids to finish back-to-school shopping two years ago, when he noticed business was booming at a nearby truck mixing colas, cream and fruity flavours.
“For about 45 minutes, I just watched people come and go from the Soda Tsunami. They probably had about 150 customers and I think maybe one went to the [adjacent] taco truck, so I was just very intrigued,” Guenette recalled.
A few sips of a dirty soda later, he not only understood the hype but was frantically searching for an equivalent back home in Alberta.
When none could be found, he opened Sip Soda Co. — an Edmonton-area shop that helped bring the hit drink north of the border.
While dirty soda is still quite nascent in Canada, the fizzy drinks with fun names are rapidly growing in popularity. They’re cropping up at summer fairs, making their way onto the menus of national chains like Crumbl and scaling social media trending charts.
“The category remains too small to track on its own. However, their emergence is all part of a bigger trend that is taking place in beverages,” said Vince Sgabellone, a food service industry analyst at research firm Circana, in an email.
The trend he was referring to is the switch away from one of the biggest drink categories — brewed coffee — toward specialty drinks that customers see as “new, different, unique, and yes in many cases, Instagram-worthy.”
“Dirty soda is very Instagrammable. They are colourful and entertaining,” Sgabellone said.
“I had one client tell me their daughter tries to match her beverage with her outfit. They are just fun.”
While one could attribute the dirty soda’s march toward ubiquity as a reflection of the usual influence U.S. social media has on Canadian fast-food innovation, Guenette said it’s actually The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives that got locals buzzing about the beverages.
The reality show’s stars are frequently shown sipping dirty sodas or visiting Swig, a U.S. chain founded in 2010 that popularized the drinks through Mormon communities, which do not drink alcohol, coffee or tea but can drink soda.
“That created the perfect storm this year,” Guenette said.
“Last year, two out of every three customers would be like, `What’s a dirty soda?’ This year, it’s complete opposite and I really believe it’s because The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives took off.”
B.C. sisters Mikayla and Brooklynn Cantelon were part of the wave.
Experimenting at home based on what they had seen on the show and then sharing their concoctions with friends and on social media, convinced them they had what it takes to open Pop Culture Dirty Soda, a trailer that’s been selling the drinks at events around B.C.’s Lower Mainland since May.
While some customers are still puzzled about what a dirty soda is, others are trying to test out what they’ve seen on TV.
“People are coming to us and saying, `Can you recreate Whitney’s order? Can you recreate Taylor’s order?'” Mikayla said, referencing “Mormon Wives” cast members.
The Cantelons can do both — and then some.
The sisters charge $4.50 for a base soda that customers then add syrups or creamers to for 75 cents each.
Topping the drink with strawberry or cheesecake cold foam or a raspberry or peach puree costs $1.50 each while lining the cup with marshmallow fluff carries a $1 charge.
They also have a roster of pre-set menu items including beverages referencing singers Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Sabrina Carpenter.
The premium items sell for $8.50 each, while the July bestseller — the cherry Bombshell made with Dr Pepper, cherry syrup, coconut cream and candy on top — goes for $6.
The price point is higher than your standard fountain drink, making dirty soda attractive for restaurants, which can use it to upsell customers and attract a younger customer base Sgabellone said is more drawn in by colourful beverages.
If dirty sodas keep increasing in popularity, they’ll follow a pattern set by cold beverages that have come before them.
Energy drinks and carbonated fruit juices have all gained more market share in recent years as they’ve joined the menus at fast-food giants like Tim Hortons.
A recent Restaurants Canada report found carbonated soft drinks are now the second most ordered beverages in the country, behind coffee.
Soda made it into 19.6 per cent of orders between March 2023 and 2024, sliding from 21.4 per cent a year earlier.
However, even with the dip, its prevalence is now higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dirty sodas could give the category a boost because they’re easy to make, are crafted from affordable ingredients most restaurants already have on hand and are seen by customers as a “destination beverage.”
“More than ever, consumers are looking for new, exciting, different,” Sgabellone said. “They will cross the street to get that.”
It’s a good sign for the Cantelons, who are preparing to launch a second trailer, and Guenette who has been in talks to franchise his business with a new drive-thru model across the country.
Hot on their heels is Crumbl, the fast-expanding cookie shop which recently introduced dirty sodas to its Canadian stores, as well as a slew of other independent upstarts and chains like McDonald’s which have experimented with the drinks in the U.S.
The competition has neither the Cantelons nor Guenette worried. They see it as a sign that they have a winning concept.
“It’s been a blessing, to be honest. I love competition,” said Guenette.
“It keeps your head up, keeps you moving forward and it gets the best out of everyone.”
