By LYNDON. ZAITZ of the Keizertimes
You are fatigued from holiday shopping at Keizer Station and you need a pick me up. What to do?
Trek to the parking lot in front of Lowe’s Home Improvement and order a dirty soda from the Dirty Beanstalk truck.
A dirty soda is a base soda that has no alcohol, but then the beverage truck’s owner, Lisa Stewart, adds flavors, fruits, and or creams to it.
“For example, we take Dr. Pepper and we put cupcake flavor syrup, strawberry puree, and vanilla cream in it. And we call that one the cake pop. It’s one of the most popular ones,” said Stewart on a recent chilly afternoon.
Dirty Beanstalk was influenced by a chain of dirty soda shops called Swig, with locations in the southwest, Utah and Texas.
Stewart’s truck is the second in the Keizer-Salem area to offer dirty sodas. She hopes to open a second location in the Spring.
One might think a dirty soda is a warm weather beverage, but Stewart is offering seasonal choices such as dirty hot cider and dirty hot chocolate.
“We’ve got several varieties of hot drinks that are quite popular right now,” said Stewart.
Why Dirty Beanstalk? Stewart said it originally going to be Jack and the Beanstalk because she was going to do coffee and gourmet chocolate.
“Because of the dirty soda craze, we just kind of took a detour and we dropped the Jack and the…, and then it was just Beanstalk; people don’t even know what that means. So we started using the name Dirty Beanstalk and everybody’s just like, wow, that’s such a cool name,” Stewart said.
Her food truck started life as a tool truck. It was bare-bones when she bought it. With a mix of new and used equipment she created her food truck with the help of her cousin.
Drink choices are limited to her customer’s imagination. Starting with a base of soda, customers can add any flavor they wish to make their own dirty concoction. Or they order a popular drink such as the Doctor Dirty—made with Dr. Pepper and coconut.
Dirty Beanstalk is open from noon to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.
