Nana did not start Sidekick Soda. She started the drink.
Fiona’s mum — Rogan’s nana — mixed apple cider vinegar with water, honey, and fruit at home in Auckland in the 1970s. A shrub: an old English drinking vinegar, fruit-first, sharp, then sweet. She worked in a health food shop. She was ahead of the aisle. We still make soda that way. We do not sell it as medicine.
What a shrub is
A shrub is fruit, a sweetener, and vinegar, left to become a drinking syrup. You lengthen it with water — still or sparkling. Ours is honey, fruit, and apple cider vinegar. The can is that idea, carbonated, without pretending it is a new invention.
The Our Story line is “a generations-old shrub of fruit, honey, and apple cider vinegar — refreshed, not reinvented.” That is Nana’s recipe, not a marketing moodboard.
From the kitchen to a can
Fiona grew up on that sour-sweet glass. Stevia sodas never worked for her — bitter, metallic. Diet sodas were undrinkable. So she and Rogan built a soda the family would actually drink: New Zealand honey, real fruit, a splash of ACV, sparkling water. No cane sugar. No stevia. No erythritol.
The company is mum-and-son owned and run from Wānaka. Launch was 2023. The shrub is older than both of us putting a label on it.
How it became a can is how we turned Nana’s shrub into soda. Why we still build drinks this way: why we still make a shrub. The fridge comparison is old-school soda and traditional drinks.
If you want the ingredient version, not the family one: what ACV soda is and what a honey-sweetened soda is.
Irene
Nana’s name was Irene. Fiona lost her to breast cancer. That is a different page — Watermelon and Breast Cancer Cure — and we keep it there. This page is the recipe she put in a glass.
The can is still fruit, honey, vinegar. That is the through-line.
