With fizz, flavor and fry bread, the Navajo Blue Travel Plaza is bottling up a unique roadside experience – one artisan soda and monster burger at a time.
Refrigerators in modern convenience stores and travel centers have wall-to-wall beverage options. But few if any of them have their own craft sodas brewed in an on-site bottling room.
That’s one of the things that makes the Navajo Blue Travel Plaza unique. It bottles eight flavors of Navajo Fizz Craft Soda. Pop the top on a refreshing Pinon Nut Root Beer, Sumac Strawberry or Cherry Lemongrass soda, the three most popular flavors, and enjoy the fizz.
How about Peaches and Cream, Navajo Greenthread Tea, Old Fashioned Lemonade, Classic Grape and Juicy Orange?
“I really don’t know of any other local craft sodas,” said Lane Schmietenknop, director of food and beverage for the Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise. “It’s the first of its kind for the Navajo Nation. We’re very proud of the quality of our product. It sets us apart.”
Nackard Pepsi started distributing Navajo Fizz last month in the Flagstaff area in 12-ounce bottles and 12-ounce slim cans, Schmietenknop said.
The Travel Plaza is adjacent to Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort. Both are just off Interstate 40, about 20 miles east of Flagstaff at Exit 219.
The Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise operates the Travel Plaza and four casinos in Arizona and New Mexico. It also has plans to develop a casino on U.S. 89 at a site that includes the now closed Horsemen Lodge steakhouse.
The Navajo Blue Travel Plaza has clean bathrooms, showers, laundry, fueling for motorists and truckers, slot machines and sports-betting kiosks in a non-smoking gaming room.
The five-year-old facility also looks to set itself apart with its Fire Pit food counter. It serves breakfast burritos, fry bread, lamb sandwiches, blue corn mush and a two-pound Soo Big Burger with all the fixings.
The monster burger comes on a 12-inch brioche bun or fry bread, known as Dah diniilghaazhi in the Navajo language. Sliced like a pizza, the burger is best shared with travel mates. It comes with homemade chips and a 44-ounce drink.
The SBB is priced at $40, or $29 for customers with a Twins Arrows casino club card. It’s served on a commemorative tin plate.
About six people per day tackle the Soo Big Burger, said Mike Apachee, Travel Plaza store manager. He grew up in Lupton, near the New Mexico border and worked with his mother who ran a trading post there.
The Navajo Blue Travel Plaza also sells a variety of Navajo branded shirts hats and food products, including bags of Navajo Blue Pinon Coffee, three flavors of Navajo BBQ Sauce and Navajo Beef Jerky.
The natural ingredients for the food products and craft soda are sourced from the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry farm in Farmington, New Mexico.
The Navajo Fizz soda, first brewed in 2019, is made in small batches of three barrels or 93 gallons.
Brewmaster Ryan Worthington has 17 years of experience. He explained the soda-making process: In the first tank, a simple syrup is made with water, natural cane sugar and different fruit or herbs for various flavors, such as sumac berries for the strawberry soda. That mixture is heated to pasteurize the liquid.
The soda mixture is then transferred to a second tank where it’s chilled to 33 degrees Fahrenheit. A custom carbonation system adds bubbles to the Fizz Soda, which takes up to 10 hours. A bottling machine then rinses the bottles, fills them with soda and caps them.
“It’s pretty simple,” Worthington said. “We can do about 450 bottles per hour. It’s a labor of love making this artisan handmade product.”
The annual production is about 5,000 cases, Schmietenknop said.
“All of our guests love to come by and see the bottling process happen.” FBN
By Peter Corbett
Photo by Peter Corbett: Navajo Blue Travel Plaza store Manager Mike Apachee proudly displays a Soo BIG Burgerwith the Fizz Soda bottling room behind him.
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2025-07-08 23:59:35