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Have you been to those fun soda shops they have in like Utah and Idaho? Swig, Sodalicious… I’m sure there are more. You can get all these fun soda concoctions, and also delicious sugar cookies. Basically a sugar coma all in one stop! Well no worries if you don’t have access to those shops, you can DIY your own soda bar and it makes the perfect party refreshment. It’s great for summer gatherings, reunions, graduations, 4th of July, backyard BBQs, pool parties and more! I’ve even got printables to help you pull it all together.
What You Need to Host a Soda Bar
The key to hosting a soda bar is having a few key ingredients on hand and a menu so people can see the different combo options- of course they can make up their own too! It’s good to have some “base” sodas that people can build different concoctions with. Those base sodas are up to you of course but here’s we used: sprite, mountain dew, root beer and dr pepper as our bases. You’ll then want a variety of add-ins to correspond to the menu you’ve made available. Here’s what we did and the supplies you’ll need:
- Sprite (I recommend just getting 2 liters of sodas since they are so much cheaper and people will be pouring them into other cups anyway)
- Dr Pepper
- Mountain Dew
- Root Beer
- Torani syrups (some recommended flavors below)
- Limes
- Half & half
- Ice
- cups (I recommend something like this)
- sticker labels (so people can put their names on their sodas and reuse the cups)
- pump spouts (makes it so much easier to add your flavoring into the sodas without trying to pour it in).
- Tray– here’s a fun extra if you plan on doing it a lot or if you’re doing it for a wedding or high end event.
The nice thing is once you invest in the syrups and pumps they usually last awhile (some flavors go more quickly than others) so you can host several soda bars, or even bust them out for a fun family movie night treat.
Soda Bar Menu Printabes
You’ll want some menus to give your guests some ideas of how they can use the supplies available to create different drinks. I have 3 8X10 menu printables available for you- you can print them as photos and put them in frames as part of your soda bar. There is one 8X10 for each “base” soda. I did combine Root Beer and Mountain Dew into one. But sprite and dr pepper each have their own printable.
but I’ve made more generic versions available for you!
Below is an example of the printable menus available in my shop. I’ve also created more of a blank version where you could write in your own recipes. The best way to do that would be to open the jpg file into canva (or any photo editing program) and add text boxes.
Have fun with this one! I think the great appeal of this is it’s great for all ages. My 4 year old son, 15 year old nephew and 80 year old Grandpa all totally loved it. In fact every time I turned around my grandpa was getting a refill ;). If you’re looking for more ideas for graduations or weddings check out this DIY donut bar.