When I was at my local Shop Rite last week, I noticed Foxon Park soda. It looked old fashioned, all natural and authentic, not like your usual store brand or cheap rip-off brand. I wondered what Foxon was. It turns out it's a small Connecticut creator and bottler of soda that's been around for 80 years.
http://foxonpark.com/cart.php?m=splash
You can order the soda online or even visit the bottler. An article appeared this weekend in the New York Times that mentioned Foxon Park and several other old fashioned soda makers in Connecticut. In some, you can even go and make your own soda. You can have a kids' party at Avery's where kids make up their own from the ingredients available.
More and more people are buying soda from small businesses like this because consumers want to buy locally. I think this is great. A few years ago, when I was teaching business plan writing, I had a student who was going to open a fruit and tea drink company in Fiji in order to compete with Coke. These soft drink bottlers make me think of her. It takes a lot of work to run a company like this, especially fighting for shelf space and share of mind against the big guys like Coke and Pepsi.
Here's a list of the companies mentioned in the Times: Avery's Beverages, Castle Beverages, Foxon Park, Hosmer Mountain Bottling Company.
It's great to see small businesses doing well in this very tough economy.
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