Soft-drink maker wants to put turkey in your straw — gravy, too

It's just what the belly craves for Thanksgiving, a refreshing bottle of ... turkey-and-gravy soda.

Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

Seattle-based Jones Soda Co. — which brought you WhoopAss energy drink, blue bubble gum and even canned-ham and fish-taco drinks — plans to test market its poultry-inspired beverage in Washington and Michigan beginning next week.

Just in time for the holiday, it's the niche bottler's latest stab at carving out a piece of the multibillion-dollar soft-drink and sports-beverage market.

"We can't compete with Coke and Pepsi. We have to be original. Turkey and gravy is original," said Peter van Stolk, the company's founder and president.

While admitting the idea is silly, van Stolk said the product will show that Jones Soda is a fun company willing to take a risk to grab a little attention.

A local competitor agrees.

"Turkey and gravy? Of course. It's Thanksgiving, isn't it?" said Chris Webb, marketing director at Real Soda in Real Bottles, also in Seattle. "It sounds like a fabulous line. My hat's off to them."

Webb said more customers are turning to small bottlers for specialty root beers and other flavors that take them back to their childhoods. It's just the atmosphere that can allow a small company with a catchy, high-quality product to make a splash.

"There's still room for a lot of these little guys," said Webb, whose company bottles or distributes brands such as BrainWash carbonated soda and The Drink With the Elvis Skull.

Turkey soda may not bring everyone back for seconds. But Jones Soda brands are popular, especially with younger people, said Pat Connors, store manager of POP the Soda Shop in Scottsdale, Ariz., which sells more than 450 beverages from its Internet site.

Jones Soda is known for using the Web to market directly to customers, who can submit photographs that compete to become soda-bottle labels, Connors said.

"They also make a great crushed melon," Connors said. "And everybody wants to have a can of WhoopAss on their desk."

But will those customers gobble up a soda that has the color and consistency of watered-down gravy minus the floating giblets and globs of turkey fat? The noncarbonated drink has a faint meaty, peppery smell that falls short of teasing the taste buds like a turkey roasting in Grandma's oven. The taste? Hard to describe. It has a salty, sweet lingering bite.

It took Jones Soda's food scientists about 30 tries before everyone settled on the final product. The result, van Stolk said, is a distinctive drink that is free of fat and carbohydrates.

If it catches on, van Stolk said customers may expect other "meal" sodas.

"Some people say I should do a corned beef on rye with mustard, but there's too much protein in that," he said.

Greg Lamm: 206-464-8541 or glamm@seattletimes.com