Utah-style dirty soda is trending thanks to ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,’ but this New Hope shop has been serving it for years

At Bucks County soda shop Fizzy Mama, soccer moms on the way to school pickup order a 32-ounce soda like they would an iced coffee: Dr Pepper, two pumps caramel syrup, and a splash of vanilla creamer.

Fizzy Mama specializes in dirty soda, a Utah delicacy where fountain beverages are jazzed up with squirts of a fruity or saccharine syrup and creamer to fit the Church of the Latter-day Saints’ doctrine that allows Mormons to drink soda but not caffeinated hot beverages like coffee or tea.

Dirty soda drive-thrus — such as the rapidly-expanding Swig — have thrived in Utah since the 2010s, but the drink went mainstream after the reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives premiered on Hulu in September. In it, a clique of Mormon mom influencers navigate the fallout of a sex scandal and often gossip about one another with a 64-ounce flavored soda in hand.

“We don’t drink alcohol or do drugs, so soda is kind of our vice,” said one cast member, spawning a cottage industry of soda-only creamer, off-menu fast food beverage hacks, and trendy soda stands in places like New York City.

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The show has been a boon for Fizzy Mama, a storefront with Orange Creamsicle-colored walls and a jolly anthropomorphized soda cup mascot that opened in the Peddler’s Village shopping center outside of New Hope in 2022. October was their busiest month yet, said married co-owners Liz and Doug Hawkins, and sales have doubled since the start of the year.

The Hawkins are hoping that Utah’s distinct soda culture is more than a fleeting trend for Philly’s suburbanites, who started off skeptical but have now begun to purchase dirty sodas by the half dozen.

“They come in planning on it being terrible, right?” said Doug Hawkins. “And then they take their first sip, go ‘Oh, this is actually good,’ and don’t stop coming back.”

Despite the novelty, soda mixed with dairy isn’t exactly new. The original version of cream soda calls for milk and an egg, and New York City’s Jewish delis have served up egg creams — seltzer frothed with whole milk and chocolate syrup — since the early 1900s. Pakistanis sip on milky lemon lime doodh, while cans of carbonated Korean Milkis line the shelves of Chinatown grocery stores.

Fizzy Mama has around 150,000 soda-syrup-creamer concoctions, Liz Hawkins said. Customers first choose from bases of Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew (and their diet or sugar-free counterparts) before adding in coffee creamer and syrup. Fizzy Mama’s selection of Monin and Torani syrups range from aromatic like lavender and peppermint, to rich and novel like buttered rum or cupcake, to fruity like blood orange or kiwi.

Fizzy Mama also has a small menu of mocktails and preselected soda combinations that have punny names like the Main Lime (Dr Pepper, lime, and coconut creamer) and the Sprite and Early, an ombre pink mixture with grapefruit, cherry, and fresh lemon. There are food court-style snacks to share, too: You can get a small cup of pillowy pretzel bites to dip in mustard or miniature chocolate cookies to dunk in caramel.

The sheer variety can create decision paralysis for first timers, said Liz Hawkins, who has developed a rule book for the perfect dirty soda: Sprite “goes with everything,” she said, while root beer calls for caramels and butterscotches. Cola pairs best with fruit.

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The drinks taste best in a chilled cup, so they started making their own soda containers over the summer thanks to a bottling machine that places metal lids on regular glasses. It’s a way to compensate for not having pebble ice — “the best kind,” according to Liz Hawkins — since it was hard to find a suitable machine.

The idea for Fizzy Mama came from Liz Hawkins, who was born in Salt Lake City before moving to Devon as a child. She’s always been a big soda drinker, recalling how she used to sneak pink cans of Tab behind her mother’s back. At night, she likes to unwind with a Diet Coke.

The Hawkins are no strangers to the Mountain West’s dirty soda juggernauts, either: Two of their children went to Brigham Young University campuses in Provo, Utah, and Rexburg, Idaho, when chains like Swig and FiiZ started to franchise. During parents’ weekends, they’d always make a pit stop.

“I thought it was fun. They’d put [the drinks] in a big ol’ Styrofoam cup that stays cold forever,” Liz Hawkins said.

When the Hawkins opened their first business, Mama Hawk’s Kitchen & Coffee, in 2020, they noticed that the handful of Italian sodas on their menu were year-round best sellers, prompting them to spin off a soda shop.

Sometimes customers will buy a dirty soda to sip on while shopping at Peddler’s Village and return later to grab a bigger one for the road. Others will pack a half dozen in coolers for trips down the Shore. A select few stock up for the week, said Liz Hawkins. She packs the soda cans without ice so the drinks don’t dilute.

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Now, the Hawkins have their sights set on expanding Fizzy Mama by franchising along the Jersey Shore boardwalk or on college campuses, though the couple said they wouldn’t mind having a Philly-area competitor to share the market with. Being the first can be risky, but also fun.

“People have their expectations for what a latte is, what a cappuccino is, but people don’t have a reference point for dirty soda … We don’t have any peers,” said Doug Hawkins. “It’s freeing.”