Our business starts with the event calendar, not a storefront.


Wild Bill’s Craft Beverage Co. has been serving small-batch craft sodas at fairs, festivals, comic conventions, air shows, and motorcycle rallies since 2002. Guests buy one of our collectible mugs and enjoy unlimited refills throughout the day.


We’ve been operating this way for 24 years, and today we serve roughly 600 events annually across 40 states. The model works for a simple reason: customers are already there.


My business partner and chief growth officer, Mike Russo, and I entered the business as franchisees in Texas. We learned the model by operating it ourselves and acquired the company in 2018.

The Business We Are Actually In

The product is craft soda made with pure cane sugar, offered in nostalgic flavors people remember and a few they don’t expect. Pickle soda gets the most attention. Birch beer wins the most converts.


But the business we are actually in is events.


Our franchisees operate mobile, Wild West-style soda wagons at events ranging from county fairs to anime conventions. Labor is primarily part-time and tied to the weekends when each wagon is operating. That makes Wild Bill’s fundamentally different from a traditional storefront beverage franchise with year-round rent, fixed operating hours, and permanent staffing requirements.


We currently have 20 franchise owners, up from 16 at the beginning of this year, with new agreements signed in Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Washington, D.C., and San Diego. We expect to have close to 60 wagons operating nationwide by the end of 2026.

Who Fits, and Who Does Not

Our franchisees come from different backgrounds, but they share one important trait: They genuinely enjoy being at events.


This is primarily a weekend business, and owners need to be comfortable working it themselves. Russo describes his own years as a franchisee as 18 straight weeks of setting up on Thursday and working through Sunday. Monday through Wednesday were for applications, bookings, and logistics.


If someone spends a Saturday at a festival and cannot wait to leave, this is probably not the right investment for them. We will tell them so.


The bigger challenge is hiring. A franchisee with three wagons can only be present at one of them. The success of the other two depends on that owner’s ability to recruit, train, and trust a team.


We are a veteran-owned company, and veterans have been central to our story from the start. In 2017, I volunteered at Boulder Crest Retreat during a reunion for a Marine company that had returned from Afghanistan. Some were unemployed or underemployed despite having significant leadership experience. I came away believing there had to be a better way to connect that experience with business ownership.


We hired four of them. Several later became franchisees. Today, our Veteran Franchise Program offers qualified veterans a reduced franchise fee and financing support.


We also have excellent franchisees who never served: first responders, people with a parent or grandparent in the military, and people who simply appreciate our mission.

Why the Model Holds Up Against Competition

We tell every new franchisee the same thing: Everybody is your competition, including the lemonade stand two booths down.


What is harder to copy is the 24 years we have spent building relationships. We’ve worked with event promoters, concessions companies, and venue operators across nearly 100 convention centers, expo halls, fairgrounds, and arenas.


Those doors do not open because you have a good pitch. They open because you showed up, delivered, and came back the following year.


New franchisees enter the system with access to those established relationships. We can also point them to markets we already serve but don't yet have a local owner in. These include Portland, West Virginia, Louisville, and Minneapolis, for example.


At events, customers are accustomed to paying a premium for things that may not be memorable. We want their experience with Wild Bill’s to be different. We offer unlimited refills, give customers a collectible mug they can keep, and provide a brand experience some guests already recognize from grocery stores or Amazon.

How We Support Operators

New franchisees spend two to three days training at our Headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania. We walk them through the equipment and then put them through a mock event. Along the way, we deliberately create an equipment problem and ask them to diagnose and fix it.


After training, we help franchisees evaluate events and complete applications, including assessing which opportunities may justify the booking fee. They also receive access to our promoter network.


Event applications are often submitted months in advance. Operators who enter the system during the winter and are ready to run by January can build a full first-season calendar.

The Next Five Years

Over the next five years, we want to expand the private and corporate side of the event calendar. That already includes employee appreciation days, university functions, grand openings, and weddings. These events help operators fill weekdays that might otherwise sit empty.


We also want to continue opening indoor venues so operators in colder markets can work through the winter instead of hibernating. We will also keep improving the equipment. We are currently operating the fifth generation of our wagon, with a sixth generation in development.


We don't want to grow simply to add franchisees. Every one of our franchisees survived COVID, when an event-based business watched its revenue fall to zero overnight. We got through that period by not signing everyone who applied, and we will not build the company's future that way either.

Advice for Anyone Exploring Franchising

Go work a day in the business before signing anything.


Not a discovery-day presentation. An actual event, on an actual Saturday, in the heat, with a line of customers.


Ask the franchisor how many candidates they rejected last year. If they cannot give you a straight answer, I would want to know why.


And find something you would be willing to do on a weekend.


Ours happens to involve soda.


About Wild Bill's Craft Beverage Co.
Wild Bill's has been crafting premium, non-alcoholic craft sodas for over 20 years, serving customers at events nationwide. With a focus on creating nostalgia-evoking flavors, Wild Bill's sodas are available online, at local retailers, and at hundreds of events annually. As a veteran-owned and operated business, Wild Bill's is dedicated to supporting veterans through meaningful employment opportunities and partnerships with veteran-focused non-profits.