April 4, 2022

A couple who discovered trendy soda shops while visiting family in Utah and Arizona is bringing the concept to south Sioux Falls.

SoDak Soda will be in a retail center along 85th Street west of Western Avenue.

The shop will feature soft drinks that are customized with flavored syrups, fruit purees and creams, “making it extra delicious,” said Katy Rees, who owns the business with her husband, Dr. Joseph Rees.

“Customers will choose their favorite soft drink, and then we’ll have some options and suggestions they can choose from,” Rees said. “And they can customize a drink with flavors they like. We’ll have 30 different syrups, several fruit purees, fresh lemon and lime,” along with the creams. Most of the sodas will be Pepsi products, but there will be a few Coke varieties, she said.

Her favorite is a 32-ounce Diet Coke with raspberry puree and coconut cream.

While many of the drinks are custom creations, employees will do the mixing for the customers, with cup sizes ranging from 16 to 44 ounces.

For people who don’t drink sodas, there will be sparkling and still beverages and energy drinks that can be flavored.

“We’re hoping it will appeal to a wide variety of people. … It will be a family fun atmosphere,” Rees said.

While there are franchised soda shops, Rees said the couple wanted to create their own business. They reached out to a mom-and-pop soda shop in the Phoenix area, SodaRush, and the owners have been mentoring them, she said.

In addition to drinks, SoDak Soda will serve sweet and savory snacks.

“We’ll have a kitchen, so we’ll be baking them fresh daily,” she said. While they’re still developing that menu, she’s envisioning treats such as artisan pretzel bites and cookies.

The gourmet soda bar will have seating for a couple dozen customers.

“It will be a variety of seating, a lounge area where friends can sit, higher tables for families, barstool seating with USB plug-ins in case people come and want to work. It will be kind of a coffee house atmosphere.”

The shop at 2305 W. Trevi Place in the Three Fountains development will have a drive-thru for “when you need a quick pick-me-up but you don’t want to get out of the car.”

They’re hoping to open in late June or early July, “but we all know how building is going; it doesn’t always work. July 1 was the builder’s estimate. We hope it might be sooner, but it might be later.”

She’s envisioning hours of 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Rees will oversee day-to-day operations. Her husband is a geriatrics physician at Avera who brought the family here from the St. Louis area for his residency in 2008.

She joked that it may have been a “midlife crisis” that led her to pursue becoming a small-business owner. One teenager has graduated from high school, the middle child is a freshman and the youngest is a sixth grader who is homeschooled.

“That flexibility means she can come and go with me as well,” Rees said.

While the family lives on the east side of Sioux Falls, Rees said she’s looking forward to becoming part of the established south-side neighborhood that continues to add businesses. They decided to pursue starting SoDak Soda in the summer of 2020 and began looking for a space a little over a year ago.

“The process did take some time,” said Mike Hauck, their broker with The Accord Commercial Team. “They wanted a drive-thru, and those are a challenge. We looked at several possibilities, but there is a lot of national tenant competition. In the end it paid off. They got a nice location with some rooftops that will help drive business for them.”