I don’t know what I was expecting to find on my first visit to Rocket Fizz Bossier City, but I certainly was not prepared for the scale of the place nor the amount of fun that I’d have there. At nearly 3,000 square feet, this huge candy shop located at the north end of Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets features more than 500 brands of soda, 90 different flavors of taffy and more bizarre, unexpected and altogether cool sweet treats than one person could possibly see in one visit. There’s Sriracha sauce-flavored cotton candy, stout beer-flavored taffy, ranch dressing-flavored soda and a gigantic, 1.5-pound box of Mike n’ Ikes. If you’ve got an obsession with vintage or unusual sodas and candies, you’re going to love this place.
Richard Morris opened the Bossier City location of Rocket Fizz – which is a national chain headquartered in California – in March of 2016. Out of more than 80 Rocket Fizz shops in the U.S., Morris said, the Bossier City location is the most successful store in the entire company.
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you discover something new,” Morris said. “It’s a kind of sensory overload in here, with the music pumping and candy everywhere you look.”
Morris estimates that 70% of his business consists of out-of-towners visiting the Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets. He also frequently welcomes groups and tour buses, who get a kick out of the shop. New items are added monthly and floor displays are regularly “switched around” to encourage customers to see more of the mind-boggling variety of sweets on offer.
I’m not sure if I will ever need, for example, a one-pound box of Cookie Dough Bites or a selection of 40 different kinds of root beer. But it’s nice to know they’re there, you know? Just in case.
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