Order Up Some Nostalgia!

Some meals arrive with an app notification. The better ones arrive on a paper plate, beside a sweating glass of cherry Coke, while somebody behind the counter remembers your usual order.

Georgia’s old-fashioned soda fountains belong to an era when the neighborhood drugstore handled prescriptions, lunch, and a fair amount of local conversation. Most vanished as pharmacies grew larger and meals grew faster, but a few counters still hold their ground. Their appeal has less to do with pretending it is 1955 and more to do with offering something modern dining often misplaces: time to sit, talk, and eat without staring at a pickup screen.

At the Commerce Drug Lunch Counter in Commerce, the pharmacy soda fountain still serves sandwiches, hamburgers, milkshakes, and ice cream treats. The combination once felt ordinary. Today, ordering lunch where someone else is picking up a prescription feels charmingly unconventional. Athens has its own enduring version at ADD Drug, where the lunch counter remains a community meeting place and a reminder that a hand-spun shake can still compete rather well with any fashionable beverage in a plastic cup.

In downtown Cartersville, The Jerks leans fully into soda-fountain history. Its late-Victorian setting pairs handcrafted sodas with malts, sundaes, banana splits, sandwiches, and the delightfully old-school title of “soda jerk,” a name drawn from the lever once pulled to dispense carbonated water. There is theater in watching a drink made from scratch, especially when most beverages now begin with a button.

The tradition continues farther south at The Drugstore Deli in Byron, where an original 1920s soda fountain anchors a lunch spot built around familiar food and local ritual. In Moultrie, The Soda Fountain keeps burgers, floats, and old-fashioned milkshakes in the community’s regular rotation.

Savannah’s Leopold’s Ice Cream broadens the story beyond the pharmacy counter. Founded in 1919, the beloved ice cream parlor preserves the same social spirit through sundaes, fountain favorites, and a room where lingering over dessert feels entirely reasonable.

These places survive because nostalgia may get people through the door, but hospitality brings them back. A counter stool encourages conversation. A milkshake refuses to be rushed. Even a simple sandwich feels more memorable when eaten somewhere generations before might instantly recognize.

Georgia has changed considerably since the soda fountain’s heyday. Fortunately, there are still places where lunch comes with a straw, a swivel stool, and permission to stay awhile.

Find more Georgia restaurants, sweet shops, and local favorites in the food and drink directory: https://gbj.com/food-drink.