Whether you thirst for root beer or spaghetti pop, Blue Sun Soda Shop has you covered
SPRING LAKE PARK, Minn. – Whether you call it "soda" or "pop," there's a place in the Twin Cities that appeals to any kind of sweet tooth.
For Mark Lazarchic, the idea of a soda shop in Spring Lake Park wasn't as simple as popping off a bottle cap.
"I didn't think it would ever work. I didn't think anyone would ever show up. I didn't even hire anybody," Lazarchic said.
He was just hoping to give people a place where the possibilities are endless.
"If there's a soda out there, I try and bring it in," he said.
Lazarchic can have up to 1,500 different kinds of soda in the Blue Sun Soda Shop at one time. They're shipped in from across the country, to form a melting pot of pop.
Root beer is the top seller, and there are 150 different brands in the store. Located a couple rows away are the sodas of Minnesota. Spring Grove and 1919 are top sellers, along with Dorothy Molter's original Root Beer. Her soda story is legendary.
"Brewing root beer up in the Boundary Waters the natural way with fermentation going on and all that other natural stuff," Lazarchic said. "She was tough."
In the spirit of Dorothy Molter, Lazarchic and his crew have been coming up with their own concoctions. Tyler Buck is the inventor in the soda laboratory. He's created some of Blue Sun's most popular flavors, and some that aren't so popular, like his spaghetti soda.
"Making that was probably one of the worst two days of my life," Buck said.
He says spaghetti soda is typically being purchased by people who do tastings "on YouTube and stuff."
You might think Lazarchic wouldn't approve, but he's a huge fan of the unique and the nauseating.
"It's terrible. It's absolutely horrendous," he said.
In fact, despite being the owner, Lazarchic doesn't like a single selection on the row of specialty sodas, featuring flavors like cucumber, dill pickle and Buffalo wing.
"Don't want to drink my Buffalo wings," he said.
What is cool is that many of these bottling companies once brewed beer, but began making soda 100 years ago during Prohibition – and they never looked back. They've survived by adapting, and in unique cases, mixing pop culture with their pop.
Some of these companies even capitalize on celebrities from the past, like "Judge Wapner Root Beer" or "Rowdy Roddy Piper Bubble Gum Soda."
Lazarchic hopes people take in the good with the bad. He wants customers to appreciate the resiliency some of these small companies have shown over the past century.
"I'm constantly surprised at what people will buy," he said. "The number-one thing I enjoy is when someone comes in here and they go, 'Oh my God, I didn't think they made that anymore.'"
The Blue Sun Soda Shop also has candy, games and a soda fountain. They have two other locations in Bloomington and Stillwater.
Oh, and Buck says he's currently working on a cheese curd soda.
