Grotto Pizza is back serving birch beer. Now it's made by a former employee & Delawarean
Mark Seiler grew up in Delaware.
While living on Laurel Street in Rehoboth Beach, he spent summers working at various businesses in the resort town.
In the summer of 1984, Seiler worked at Grotto Pizza on Rehoboth Avenue.
"I was the cheese grater and the sauce maker. I ate about 10 slices a shift," he says, joking.
Little did Seiler know, almost 40 years later, he would be back at Grotto Pizza. Kind of.
Seiler, who now lives in Austin, Texas, is the president and CEO of Maine Root Handcrafted Beverages. The company, founded in 2004, offers a variety of handcrafted beverages — from ginger brews to lemonade — and is sold in more than 7,500 locations worldwide.
When Delaware friends shared Delaware Online/The News Journal stories this past summer that Grotto Pizza would no longer be serving birch beer at 23 of its restaurants, Seiler jumped into action and sent samples of Maine Root birch beer to the restaurant chain.
Then, he waited to see what would happen.
Birch beer had been served as a fountain soft drink at Grotto since at least the 1970s. But this past summer, all the taps ran dry when the Fanta birch beer flavor, made by Coca-Cola, that the Delaware-based pizza chain had been using in its beverage dispensers for decades was no longer available.
The Coca-Cola Co. Consumer Interaction Center of North America told Delaware Online/The News Journal that due to high demand for certain products and supply disruptions, "we’ve had to temporarily shift our focus toward producing the products with the highest demand."
The Fanta birch beer flavor, most popular in the northeastern part of the U.S., apparently was not in high enough demand.
Grotto Pizza and other area restaurants switched from Fanta fountain birch beer to Barq's root beer, but customers were not happy. The taste is not the same.
"Whaaaat? I've been ordering that since I was a kid," wrote one Grotto customer on the iDewey Facebook page.
Birch beer's flavor comes from the sap of birch trees. In its pure form, root beer is made from sassafras vines and roots.
Grotto Pizza Food & Beverage Director Michael Jones told Delaware Online/The News Journal in June that the pizza chain was open to the option of testing other birch beer brands.
But, he said, Grotto would not move forward with serving anything in their locations "until we find a quality birch beer product that's comparable."
On Sunday, Oct. 1, Grotto celebrated the return of fountain birch beer to all of its Delaware and Maryland restaurants.
Its choice was Maine Root birch beer made by the company run by former Grotto Pizza employee and Delaware resident Mark Seiler.
The syrup used for the carbonated beverage, which some say has hints of a wintergreen flavor, is made with 100% organic sugar cane from Fair Trade farms in Brazil.
"Due to birch beer’s popularity — and all of the feedback we received — it was important for us to find a product with exceptional quality comparable to what we offered in the past,” Grotto Pizza President Jeff Gosnear said. “There’s a sense of nostalgia with getting birch beer and Grotto Pizza, especially in our restaurants at the Delaware beaches."
Seiler said he couldn't be happier with the selection.
"I've got thousands of customers and this one makes me the most happy. I still love Delaware. My mom and sister still live there," he said. "This makes my hair stand up. I’m so pumped."
Contact Patricia Talorico at [email protected] or 302-324-2861 and follow her on X (Twitter) @pattytalorico. Sign up for her Delaware Eats newsletter.
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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Former Delaware resident helps bring back birch beer to Grotto Pizza