If you grew up in Shawano County, there is a good chance you have heard of Twigs and if you grew up in Wisconsin, there’s even a better chance your childhood included Sun Drop soda. Sun Drop came out in the early fifties, as the first “Golden Cola.” In 1953, Sun Drop was introduced to the Hartwig family.
“Most people think that we invented it, but actually it was invented by guy named Charles Lazier out of St. Louis,” said Dan Hartwig.
In order to get the full story behind this bottled beverage you must go back three-quarters of a century when Floyd Hartwig started the business in the early 1950s. He was in the military during the Korean War and was shot through both knees. Unsure of the future, he did not know what he was going to do with his life, but he came up with this idea to start a bottling company. Inspired by his nickname, “Twig”, they decided to call the business Twig’s Beverage. In 1986 Twig’s son Dan and his wife Diane bought the business and today their sons Ben and Jake help run it.
In addition to bottling Sun Drop soda, Twigs also bottles its own brand of sodas including root beer, cherry, blue raspberry and butterscotch and is still served in glass bottles. The family business occupies a place in Shawano history. Today the Hartwig family is preserving “Twig’s history” one bottle, one case, and one memory at a time. In a way Twig’s is bottling nostalgia and that continues to attract visitors from near and far.
