Okolahoma Soda Company Named Official Craft Soda Supplier for the Oklahoma Route 66 Centennial Anniversary Celebration

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma January 4, 2026. It's with great excitement we share, Oklahoma Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, Chairman of the Oklahoma Route 66 Centennial Anniversary Committee has named Okolahoma Soda Company as Official Craft Soda Supplier for the Oklahoma Route 66 Centennial Anniversary Celebration spanning all of 2026.

Statement from Lt. Governor Pinnell: "As Oklahoma prepares to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mother Road, we're proud to partner with the Okolahoma Soda Company as the Official Craft Soda Supplier for the Route 66 Centennial. As our state's first and only family-owned craft soda company, they represent the kind of homegrown innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that makes Oklahoma special. Their story is one of family, community, and pride in Oklahoma: values that perfectly align with the Route 66 legacy."

"As Oklahoma's first family-owned producer of handcrafted soda, this recognition strengthens our family's craft soda legacy in Oklahoma history. It allows future generations of our family to be part of the special journey of Okolahoma Soda Company, serving both our local communities and visitors alike," said Okolahoma Soda Co-Owner and President, John Occhipinti.

Further, we extend our sincere gratitude to Lt. Governor Pinnell, Kerry Barrick, and the entire Oklahoma Route 66 Centennial Anniversary Committee for their trust and support. We are honored to participate in the Oklahoma Route 66 Centennial Anniversary Celebration, which will showcase both Oklahoma and Okolahoma Soda Company to the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected to visit Oklahoma in 2026.

The Okolahoma Soda Story

In Edmond, Oklahoma, during a family picnic in the summer of 2017, the idea of creating unique, handcrafted sodas, that would set themselves apart from the traditional name brand soft drinks, came to be. The idea stemmed from co-owners, and twin brothers, Garrett and Everett Occhipinti's love for quality soda and an off-the-cuff comment made by their father, co-owner John Occhipinti saying, "as much soda as you guys drink, mom and I need to start our own soda company just to save money". Who knew that comment would deliver Oklahoma's first and only family owned and managed producer of handcrafted soda's made in small batch quantities delivering both pure cane sugar and zero sugar options.

To ensure uniqueness, quality, and understanding everyone has a different tasting palate, the family, with age demographics spanning teens, through 60's began conducting weekly taste tests of hundreds of varieties of soft drinks, from across North America and Europe to help them achieve a starting point of what they expected their flavor profiles to be. After nearly 12 months of research and development and nearly 500 samples tested, their flavoring profiles were completed, allowing Okolahoma Soda Co. to deliver their families' unique flavors and recipes that are found in each of their specialty handcrafted sodas. When considering the name of their soda company the goal was to develop the only, family owned and managed "Made in Oklahoma" soda company offering many wonderful flavors, thus, the name OKOLAHOMA was born!

"We totally overkilled our R&D process" said John Occhipinti, making Okolahoma Soda's flavoring and recipes closely guarded and unique to us. We would not do it any other way. This extra time, expense, and attention to detail given to each of our flavors has delivered what so many have claimed as the best tasting, highest quality, handcrafted soda they have ever tasted. We will never use cheap, mass produced, generic, off-the-shelf flavorings that would compromise the taste, quality, and consistency of our sodas. We brew and package each of our sodas from scratch, in small batch production runs, and nothing is packaged until our family signs off on it. While this process costs up to four times more and takes longer, this is what sets Okolahoma Soda Company apart making our handcrafted sodas so unique, special, and wonderful tasting as seen through the thousands of loyal followers and customers we have the privilege to serve each day.

Okolahoma Soda products can be found in thousands of retail locations throughout Oklahoma and neighboring states from mom and pops to bars, restaurants, and casinos, to C-stores as OnCue, QuikTrip, and Love's, to national chains as Walmart, Sam's, and Costco. Through a new German distribution partnership, Okolahoma Soda can soon be found throughout Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands.

For more information contact: John Occhipinti 405-308-0108