“We’ve worked together for decades now,” said Brown. “That’s just all we know. I can’t imagine it any other way. I can’t imagine having a business with someone I didn’t live with.”

The couple met while working in restaurants, long before they launched the craft soda company that now distributes throughout much of the Southeast. Brown worked front of house while Allen worked in the kitchen, and the rhythms of partnership that began there naturally carried into entrepreneurship.

Allen said the overlap between marriage and business creates a level of trust that simplifies many decisions.

“It in some ways makes it easier, because there’s not a lack of trust in our life…why would there be a lack of trust when it comes to the business? And then vice versa,” Allen said.

Now more than a decade into business ownership, the couple’s relationship with the company has evolved again as their family has grown.

Brown and Allen have two sons, Grady, 6, and Cohen, 2. In the company’s early years, especially during the pandemic, the business and family life blended almost completely.

“In the early days when we didn’t have a gift shop or a lot of customers in here, we would bring Grady to work with us,” Brown said. “We were really hustling, and so we would set Grady up in the office with books and things to keep him entertained.”

As the business expanded and staffing increased, the family gained more flexibility and more separation between home and work life. Allen said that shift was one of the original goals behind starting the business.

“It was always about gaining independence and having the freedom and flexibility to be able to spend time at home with them,” Allen said.  

That vision extends into the future, though not in the sense of pressuring their children to eventually take over the company.

“We’re definitely not going to push them,’” Brown said. “That’s not us at all. If they want to go be a doctor or a carpenter or whatever they want their dreams to be.”

Still, the business has already become part of their children’s identity. Brown said their oldest son often talks about one day becoming “a soda jerk.” The boys are regular visitors at the production facility and gift shop.

“When they come to work, it’s kind of like they’re the mascots of the team,” Brown said. “Everyone gets the dry erase markers out, and they’re writing on the order board, and they’re getting slushies out of the gift shop.”

The experience also exposes them to the creative and manufacturing sides of the business at an early age. Allen hopes that exposure leaves a lasting impression.

“[They’re] getting to see in a professional setting that people still make things,” Allen said. 

That hands-on spirit has defined the company since its beginning. Brown and Allen founded the business in May 2013 after becoming interested in traditional soda-making techniques and Appalachian flavors, creating beverages inspired by local fruits and herbs. Their earliest supply chain relationships began at local farmers markets, where neighboring vendors would often sell them leftover produce that couldn’t be carried over to the next market day.

“It started as that really simple thing,” Brown said. “Literally our neighbor farm beside us would have raspberries left over at the end of the day that they didn’t sell, and raspberries don’t keep. So we would say, ‘We’ll buy those raspberries off of you, and we’ll make some soda with it.’”

Over the years, the scale has changed dramatically, but many of the relationships remain intact.

The company now works with suppliers throughout Western North Carolina and beyond, including a lavender farm in Landrum, South Carolina, while still prioritizing regional sourcing and agricultural partnerships. KT’s Orchard & Apiary in Canton as one of the company’s longest-standing partners.

“She’s been a partner supplier since literally day one,” Allen said. “We’re now buying like 20 bushels of peaches at a time and 15 bushels of apples. That whole community relationship building that was there when we started — all it’s done is just grown and evolved. The connection to place is still always a top priority.”

Brown and Allen are both Haywood County natives who eventually returned home after spending time elsewhere in North Carolina.

“I couldn’t imagine as an adult living anywhere else,” Brown said. “We just feel really blessed to naturally be from here for generations and generations. Everyone’s just trying to put their little mark on Waynesville and Haywood County as a whole, and work collaboratively and try to make this place better for themselves and their families and the people that visit the area.”

Allen added that the town has managed to preserve a balance between growth and small-business culture.

“They’ve been strategic about fostering the small businesses and understanding that if you just turn it into carbon copies, it loses that special thing,” he said. 

That growth continues today. In recent years, the company has expanded its gift shop and added a soda counter serving fountain sodas, floats, and slushies made with its own products alongside North Carolina-made snacks and specialty goods.

Distribution has also widened significantly. While the company still self-distributes throughout much of Western North Carolina, it now works with a regional distributor that has helped place its sodas in retailers across North Carolina, South Carolina, parts of Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.

Even with that expansion, Brown and Allen continue to approach the business through the same collaborative, family-centered lens that shaped its beginnings.

“We saw the track record, we saw the opportunities, we knew some of the relationships in the food scene just from being in restaurants,” Brown said. “It was just like, let’s put all this together and try to leave our own mark.”

Waynesville Soda Jerks gift shop and soda bar is located at 35 Bridges Street, Waynesville. Learn more at WaynesvilleSodaJerks.com.