Why Culver's Root Beer Tastes Better Than Anything You'll Find At The Store

Culver's has a lot of things going for it. From its high-quality burgers that stand out from other fast food joints to its beloved cheese curds, consumers across the Midwest and beyond swear by the chain for a multitude of reasons. However, one of the underrated highlights of Culver's menu is its signature root beer — a fountain drink that's exclusive to the chain, and is as good as the best root beer brand on the market today. Culver's caffeine-free root beer is well known for producing a lot of foam at the top, making it taste much creamier than its competitors, as a result. Plus, the additional hint of vanilla — which is most notable in the lingering aftertaste — gives this root beer an even more distinguishable flavor.

This uniqueness came as a result of Craig Culver — one of the original co-founders of the Wisconsin-based chain — being a massive fan of root beer, growing up, and developing his very own recipe when the restaurant first opened. While the formula has likely changed in the time since the chain first sold it directly from the barrel in the 1980s, Culver's root beer's distinct flavor and mouthfeel have persisted, making it stand out from the crowd.

Considering that Culver's root beer is made in-house, and isn't made by popular fast food chain favorites like Pepsi or Coke, the drink has withstood innovations at the restaurant, while remaining unchanged. The biggest of these revampings occurred in 2023 when Culver's switched its fountain drink supplier from PepsiCo to Coca-Cola and began exclusively selling the Georgia-based company's products. This worried many customers, with some assuming the swap would also mean that Culver's signature root beer would be replaced with Barq's — Coca-Cola's root beer brand. Luckily, Culver's dispelled this fear, alerting the public via X that Dr. Pepper, sweetened tea, unsweetened tea, root beer, and diet root beer would all remain on the menu.

However, some are still untrusting of this statement by the company. Some fans on Reddit suspect that their local Culver's has begun selling Barq's rather than the chain's signature brew. Nevertheless, others have strongly denied this claim, saying that Culver's root beer is too unique for it to have changed without more customers noticing.