Tree Fort Root Beer
Eva Duckler, 17, brought Tree Fort Root Beer to market in 2015 after developing the brand for her senior project at Blake—a private school in Minneapolis, MN.
Eva’s brother and sister-in-law, David and Lily Duckler, own a tea house and café in the Seward neighborhood, and helped develop the brand by providing the know-how, ingredients, and the facility to help the young entrepreneur with her ambition.
Duckler claims to have tried hundreds of root beers since she was very young, and wanted to develop something creamy, sweet, all natural, and something different than traditional sodas like Coke and Pepsi that she deemed “kind of rough stuff.” According to Duckler, the root beer is hand brewed with herbs and flowers including marigold and chicory, with vanilla and honey also in the mix. She creates most of the flavors herself by “steeping out a bunch of herbs using water extraction.” Indeed the soda is not in line with a traditional root beer flavor, but Duckler acknowledges this, adding that the soda is much more “layered and balanced.” She says, “It’s what I’d like to think root beer tasted like back at its origins in the 1800s when people were just drinking it made from roots!”
After 70 failed attempts, and much trial and error, Duckler finalized the beverage she was looking for, and found a distributor soon knocking on her door. She currently produces about 1,000 bottles per week, and hopes to move to a larger facility where she can up the production to15 barrels of root beer per week.
Her goal is to continue growing her business, with current plans to bring on additional sodas such as cream soda, cola, ginger ale, and orange.
Duckler’s original plan was to attend Wellesley College, but she postponed her schooling to devote more time to running and growing her business.
Sources: citypages.com, tcdailyplanet.net, heavytable.com, and minnesota.cbslocal.com
