SALT LAKE CITY — In 2010, Swig founder Nicole Tanner pioneered drinks with creative names like Spring Fling, Big Booty Judy and Hula Girl — fitting names for a new drink coined “dirty soda.” What started in St. George has since grown into a plethora of soda companies in Utah, hopping on the soda success, like FiiZ, Sodalicious, Thirst, Twisted Sugar and Quench It.
Still, Swig dominated the Utah market and is quickly expanding to several different locations across the United States. But the brand is now seeing numerous competitors.
National chains like McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Sonic and many more are looking to capture a share of the dirty soda market.
It’s one of the challenges that trying to scale nationally can bring — if it’s good, others will want to sell it too.
“As they grow, they will face the challenge of both weakening product novelty and other established companies expanding their products to fill the space,” BYU professor Mike Hendron said.
Swig has expanded outside of Utah, Arizona and Idaho, where dirty sodas are most popular, with 168 locations across the country, including 40 in Texas and 10 in Florida.
First-mover advantage, or disadvantage
Some Utah-based companies, before Swig — like WordPerfect, Caldera (software) and Evans & Sutherland — all faced “first-mover disadvantage.” This is the idea that companies face specific challenges when they are the first to enter a new market, while others do not.
By incurring costs to develop, market and execute the idea, companies may find themselves at a disadvantage when a different company, already nationally scaled with greater efficiency, enters the market.
But being the first to a new market can also be a great advantage, known as “first-mover advantage.” While facing higher costs initially to bring the product to the market, being first can allow a company to build brand recognition and customer loyalty before other companies enter the market.
According to Hendron, Swig still appears to be doing well.
“The average sales for each location is reported at over $1.2 million, which is especially strong,” he said. Assuming store sales remain steady, an investment in Swig locations “provides an appealing payback for franchise owners.”
But larger chains are joining the trend.
Dunkin’ Donuts introduced its own version of dirty soda in April, and McDonald’s introduced its own line of drinks. Even Crumbl, a Utah-based company with 1,100 locations, has paired its popular gourmet cookies with its own version of signature drinks.
Utah Business put the situation into perspective: Swig currently operates 168 stores, with Crumbl at six times that many locations. When McDonald’s only started testing the drink in 2025, it was at nearly triple the locations Swig currently owns. Now the drinks have rolled out at nearly 14,000 U.S. locations.
With the entry of McDonald’s, it is only a matter of time before all the big fish are circling the high-profit-margin item, which may squeeze profit margins for Swig locations and leave a majority of market share to chains already prepared for national scale, according to Utah Business.
What Swig can do to maintain its market share
The company that trademarked “home of the original dirty soda” can still remain a power in the dirty soda market, Hendron says. Though Swig may need to add more treats, snacks and maybe even meals.
Other fast-food chains have flavored sodas on their menus, “and they have the advantage of offering a full menu of food items that broaden their appeal,” he said. “The typical strategy to maintain success in a scenario like this would be to expand the Swig product line.”
But he cautioned that such a move would need to be carefully crafted to preserve the uniqueness that made Swig successful in the first place.
Another potential strategy is to saturate specific areas.
“Quick Quack car washes, which are all corporate-owned, have demonstrated that saturating areas is an effective defense against competition,” Hendron said. “Similarly, early dominance in targeted areas may discourage other new entrants from challenging Swig.”
As Swig requires new franchise owners to open 10 stores within the desired area, saturation may be the goal as the company scales nationally.
How Swig gained national popularity
Amid the national craze for dirty sodas, the origins began in Utah to cater to a specific group — members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tanner, a mother of five, saw a need for soda shops for people who just wanted a soda instead of waiting in a drive-thru behind someone ordering food items that often slow the line down.
Similar to a coffee shop, she set up soda shops with a menu of soda variations because Latter-day Saints are encouraged to abstain from drinking coffee. The idea took off.
Eleven years after its initial opening, dirty soda gained popularity after popular singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo posted a picture of her holding a Swig-branded cup at the end of 2021.
Following Rodrigo’s post, dirty soda started trending on TikTok, with the drink up 609% and Swig up 222%. It was not long after that Swig opened its first store in Texas, per Fairview Economic Development.
Later in the year, the Larry H. Miller Company purchased a majority share in Swig.
But popularity for the drink did not come from Rodrigo alone. The hit television show, “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” mentions the drink on occasion as the former members of MomTok discuss the trendy Utah refreshment.
The New York Times reports Whitney Leavitt, a star on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” was surprised to hear so many questions from reporters about her favorite drink order.
“(Reporters) were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks,” she said.
Now the drink shops can be found in many parts of the country, and Leavitt is even the chief creative and brand officer of one such company in New York City, per BuzzFeed.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
