Fitz's facts for kids
Fitz's Bottling Company is a popular soda brand from the St. Louis area in the United States. They are famous for their delicious root beer. Fitz's also has a special restaurant and a small soda factory called a microbrewery. You can find it in University City, Missouri, on a cool street called the Delmar Loop.
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The Story of Fitz's Soda
Fitz's started a long time ago as a drive-in restaurant. It was in Richmond Heights, Missouri, a town near St. Louis.
How Fitz's Began
The first Fitz's opened in 1947. It was a place where you could drive up and get hamburgers and fries. They also made their own root beer right there! People loved to enjoy the root beer with their meals.
Bringing Back the Flavor
The first Fitz's restaurant closed in 1976. For a while, the root beer wasn't made anymore. But about 15 years later, in the early 1990s, the original root beer recipe was brought back. A new spot was found on the Delmar Loop. Old-fashioned bottling machines were put in, and Fitz's started making soda again.
Tasty Drinks from Fitz's
Fitz's makes many different kinds of soda. Their most famous one is still their root beer.
What Flavors Can You Find?
Besides root beer, Fitz's makes other fun flavors. These include diet root beer, a lemon-lime soda called Voodoo, and cream soda. They also have grape, orange, and strawberry sodas. You can find ginger ale, a raspberry cola called Hip Hop Pop, and orange cream soda too.
Special Soda Making
The labels on Fitz's bottles have a familiar logo. The classic colors are red, white, and blue. But these colors change for each flavor. This helps you know what kind of soda is inside! Fitz's makes their soda the old-fashioned way. They use real cane sugar instead of other sweeteners.
The Fitz's Restaurant Experience
The Fitz's restaurant is a fun place to visit. It looks like something from the 1950s.
Restaurant Style and Seating
The building has a cool art deco design. It is painted in bright, bold colors. Inside, you can sit at the bar, in booths, or at tables. There is also an outdoor patio for eating when the weather is nice. The building used to be a bank! The soda bottling machines are now where the bank vault used to be.
Food and Fun for Everyone
At Fitz's, you can enjoy classic American-style food. They also have many kinds of shakes and malts. Kids' meals come in special boxes. These boxes look like 1950s cars, just like the old drive-in days! The restaurant was even shown on a TV show called Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels.
Fitz's Growth Over Time
Fitz's tried to open more locations in different cities.
Expanding to New Places
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fitz's opened new spots. They had restaurants and bottling plants in Chesterfield, MO and Kansas City. The Kansas City location was inside Union Station.
Challenges and New Openings
At first, these new restaurants did well. But over time, they closed because not enough people visited them. However, Fitz's opened another new location in South County in 2019.
