Shop offers more than 100 brands of soda pop

ISTANBUL

A shop in Istanbul is offering 120 different kinds of soda pops, attracting customers from all over the country.

Entrepreneur Mustafa Saklı opened his business, which flourished over the years, in 2015 in Istanbul’s Vefa quarter.

When he first opened his store, his intention was to sell local products from different parts of the country.

“One day, a customer asked me to bring him a specific soda pop, and that’s how it all started,” Saklı recalled.

One year later, the entrepreneur turned his shop into a business solely dedicated to selling soda pops and named it “Sevda Gazozcusu.”

“At the beginning, I did a bit of research on soda pop and started displaying around 40 different brands of those soft drinks in my shop window. Later, I developed this idea of opening a soda pop store,” Saklı remembered.

Now, Saklı sells more than 100 soda pops from 40 to 50 provinces. As his business grew, he opened a second store in Istanbul’s Balat neighborhood and another one in tourist hotspot Safranbolu district in the northern province of Karabük, near the Black Sea coast.

There are some 100 to 150 soda pop producers in Turkey, Saklı said, adding though the number of those producers keep changing.

“We also have started to produce our very own soda pop; we produce and bottle it here in the shop and offer it to customers.”

The choice of people in soda pops and their flavors vary depending on the age group, according to Saklı.

“Sevda Gazozcusu has something that touches everyone’s lives. A customer once made us open the store in the middle of the night to buy a soda pop which his pregnant was craving. Some customers even come here for a soda pop that their deceased partners would drink.”

Soda pops first appeared in Turkey in the 1890s during the Ottoman era. The first factory was established in 1908 by Aleksandra Mısırlıoğlu, who obtained the license and bought the necessary machinery from France.
Over the decades, soda pops became a favorite refresher for Turkish people, with provinces producing their own drinks of different flavors.