Towne Club
Our Take
Detroit’s hometown soda, and the source of a very specific brand of nostalgia. Harold Samhat launched Towne Club in the mid-1960s with a genius idea: “Pop Shops” — warehouse-style stores scattered across the city where you’d grab a sturdy wooden crate, walk the shelves, and fill it with 24 glass bottles hand-picked from 30 or 40 flavors no grocery store carried. It was cheap, it was fun, and for a generation of Detroit kids, completing a case was a sacred ritual.
The pop centers faded in the 1980s and the brand nearly vanished — but Towne Club came back, and it’s still made and bottled right in Detroit (by Intrastate Distributors), now in pure-cane-sugar glass bottles with proudly local flavors like Michigan Cherry and Honolulu Blue Cream (yes, named for the Lions). A taste of the city, in soda form.