Regional Drinks While Traveling

I am a big diet Snapple peach iced tea fan (sorry, zero sugar Snapple tea). I typically pick up a bottle when I am at a lunch in a deli or restaurant. This is not a big deal when you are in the northeast. Once you travel to another part of the country, finding Snapple iced tea (especially diet peach iced tea) is a challenge. Or to state it flat out, you are not going to be able to find Snapple iced tea in a deli or a restaurant once you leave the northeast.

This made me start to think about our regionalized our soft drinks are. Sure, you can a Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade and Mountain Dew almost anywhere in the USA. I will point out that finding a Pepsi in the Atlanta area will be a challenge.

But what about regional drinks? Where can you find Vernors Ginger Soda, Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda, Mr Q Cumber or even Dr Pepper? Fortunately for the Dr. Pepper fans, it is more readily available than the other regional sodas. Unfortunately, for the rest of the regional drinks, it is hard sledding to find these drinks outside of the areas they were created.

My word of advice is to not even try to find them, just adapt to the local variations even if they are inferior. I know my wife tried to take the Snapple packets with her when we travel but the taste of the packets were awful. For example, in Florida you may want to substitute Lipton Diet Peach Iced Tea for Snapple. I will be the first to say that it is a poor substitute but it is better than nothing.