Sixteen years after Nicole Robison opened the first-ever Swig drive-thru in St. George, the Utah-grown brand that aims to become the Starbucks of dirty soda is “flattered” by all the competition, its CEO told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Copy cats large and small are cropping up across the country, from local shops and pop-up trailers to fast food giants McDonald’s and Taco Bell, serving some combination of syrups, cream and caffeine.

They’re all imitating a piece of Utah culture that Swig is in the business of exporting, because the brand believes it has universal appeal.

Here, the drink is so ubiquitous, Salt Lake’s minor league baseball team becomes the “Utah Dirty Sodas” on Wednesdays, an alter ego they adopted because, “In Utah, we own our obsessions,” a promotional video states.

“We’re bold, sweet, a little dirty,” the clip quips. (The Larry H. Miller Company owns the Salt Lake Bees and has a majority stake in Swig.)

“I think people thought dirty soda was a fad, or kind of a niche; a quirky Utah thing,” Swig’s CEO, Alex Dunn, told The Tribune.

Not anymore.

Swig has leveraged that niche into a national craze, propelled by the brand’s appearances on Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and pop singer Oliva Rodrigo’s Instagram. Today, with more than 160 stores (and new ones opening every six days, on average), Dunn said the brand isn’t scared — and has no plans to slow down.

“We’re doing, for carbonated beverages, what Starbucks did for coffee,” he said.

It seems to be working. The chain’s busiest store, he said, is also one of its newest — in Orlando, more than 2,200 miles away from its original shop.

What sets Swig apart?

The line of Swig competitors has been growing “from the very beginning,” Dunn said, including Utah chains FiiZ Drinks, Sodalicious and Thirst Drinks.

Even Swig started as a way to try and improve an existing product: Robison wanted to replicate what she liked about Sonic’s sodas and toss what she didn’t.

She kept the styrofoam cup and pebble ice, but lost the burgers, fries and onions (which she felt she sometimes tasted in her usual Diet Coke), Dunn said. That’s why Swig serves so few food items, with no deep fryers in sight.

“Certainly if you think of places you can get soda,” Dunn said, “there’s been a lot of places people can get soda.”

But at Swig, he contends, customers get more than a drink. They get their drink.

The company offers more than 20 drink bases, ranging from standards like Coke, Pepsi, Sprite and Dr Pepper to Fresca, ginger ale and Big Red (with sugar-free options). They’ve also added “Refreshers,” made with still or sparkling water, and “Revivers” (Swig’s energy drink).

From there, a customer can choose how much ice they want; which proprietary syrups, fresh fruits and purees to include; and whether to add cream or other mix-ins, like a gummy shark or flavor pearls.

The combination options — 813,909,323,331,759,027,911,655,544 of them, according to a Tribune analysis — outnumber the grains of sand on Earth and the number of stars in the observable universe.

Dunn’s favorite is an “Island Time,” a Fresca-based drink with mango, passion fruit and fresh orange. Their most popular order is the “Texas Tab,” made with Dr Pepper, vanilla and coconut cream.

‘They just taste better’

Dirty soda, in general, is cheap and easy to make. Anyone with a soda fountain, flavorings and a drive-thru can open a competing business with relatively little upfront investment, said Eric Schulz, a Utah State University marketing professor who once worked for Coca-Cola.

“There’s no barrier to entry,” he said. And once customers know their preferred combination of syrups and cream, “it doesn’t matter where” they get it.

Recent research from Torani, a popular syrup maker, shows that over the past three months, customers have increasingly bought their dirty sodas at fast food restaurants instead of Swig.

Yet, for some die-hard fans, those chains can’t replace Swig.

Karissa Jarman, who earned a free ticket to a recent Utah Dirty Sodas game by buying Swig merchandise (including the branded tumbler she brought to the ballpark), said she’s tried dirty soda from McDonald’s and other places but always comes back to Swig.

“They just taste better,” she said.

Angie Toone has been drinking dirty soda since Robison first created Swig. Her favorite is a dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla and coconut. For years, she lived in American Fork, where she also enjoyed access to Sodalicious. She likes her drink “really peppy,” and prefers a wider straw.

“I feel like Swig just does it right,” she said.

About five years ago, though, she moved to Oklahoma, and found that despite an abundance of places that sell dirty soda — including a franchised Swig nearby — the drinks don’t seem the same.

“I don’t think it was as good,” she said, “because I think the people here just don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like.”

Sometimes there’s too much syrup, she said. Sometimes there’s not enough. Once she got a dirty Dr Pepper from Sonic that she swears tasted like cilantro.

Toone has thought about selling dirty sodas herself “to show people here what dirty sodas actually are supposed to taste like.”

Dunn said Swig focuses on what it can control: “Our strategy, our customers and providing that amazing day-making experience.”

“So far it’s worked really well,” he continued.

Swig continues to expand because it’s seen “a ton of demand.”

“People want to come. They want to experience Swig. They’ve heard about it, they’ve seen it, and they want to experience (it),” Dunn said.

‘We do not care for the others’

Well into what ended up as a loss against the Omaha Storm Chasers, the Swig line at the Utah Dirty Sodas ballpark on July 22 showed no signs of shortening.

Dave Thompson waited for a handful of drinks for him and his sons — Tatum, Benny, Quincy and Riley — who already knew their orders. The boys rattled off their favorites: the “Shark Attack,” “Beach Babe” and “Hula Girl.”

“We do not care for the others,” Dave Thompson said of Swig’s competitors. “Swig just has way better ingredients.”

A few spots away in line, Dave and Drew Slechta were experiencing Swig for the first time. The father and son had flown in from Iowa to catch the game before visiting some of Utah’s national parks.

“We gotta get the dirty soda,” the father said, standing next to his son, who had just bought, and put on, the team’s dirty soda jersey.

They had heard about Swig before their trip. The boy said he tried a similar drink to the company’s “Shark Attack” at a coffee shop back home, but neither was sure if Swig would live up to its reputation.

In the end, though, the boy didn’t like the original, he said.

It wasn’t sweet enough.

— Tribune staff writer Andy Larsen contributed to this report.