Our Story
Some Things
Are Worth Saving.
Natural ingredients. Traditional roots.
Made for today.
The world keeps moving forward. We believe some of the things that served generations before us deserve to come along.
REAL AMERICAN. SOAP. / A Tradition Worth Carrying Forward
In the Soak Street shop · Early in our business
A Family Beginning
Something We Didn’t Want to Be Without.
Soak Street began shortly after the pandemic hit. In a time of uncertainty, quality soap was one of the everyday comforts we wanted to keep close.
We started making bar soap for ourselves, our friends, our family, and our neighbors. What began as a hobby gave us something useful to share—and something unexpected to think about.
Those first bars felt noticeably different from the soap we were used to buying. The lather. The feel. The experience of using them.
That raised a question: if our first attempts were this good, how much better could we make them?
A Year of Trying Again
Good Was Only the Beginning.
We spent the next year changing ingredients, adjusting proportions, comparing batches, and conducting blind tests. We wanted a bar that did its job well—and made an ordinary daily routine a little more enjoyable.
We considered cleaning power, lather, feel, longevity, how skin felt after washing, and even appearance. We use no dyes, but a well-made bar should still be beautiful.
Again and again, we came back to balance. A single quality wasn’t enough. We wanted the whole bar to work beautifully.
Like a good cup of coffee, a good soap makes an everyday moment noticeably better.
How it Cleans How it Feels How it Lasts
Care in the making, batch after batch
Natural and Traditional
We Found Our Way Back.
Eventually, we found the blend that became the foundation of every Soak Street bar: lard, coconut oil, beef tallow, olive oil, and castor oil.
Our research gave that discovery a deeper meaning. The ingredients we had come to appreciate connected us to older American soapmaking traditions. We had been looking for a better everyday soap. Along the way, we found a part of the past worth carrying forward.
Traditional Fats. Lasting Purpose.
Pure, deodorized beef tallow—one of the traditional ingredients at the heart of our formulas.
Plant Oils. A Thoughtful Balance
Olive oil, carefully balanced with the other fats and oils in our soaps.
Lard · Coconut Oil · Beef Tallow · Olive Oil · Castor Oil
No single oil makes the perfect soap. The blend does.
The Science Behind the Blend
Simple to Use.
Thoughtfully Complex.
Every fat and oil brings a different mix of fatty acids. Changing one ingredient shifts several parts of the formula at once—affecting the bar’s firmness, cleansing, lather, and feel.
Our idea of “American soap” grew from the concept of European Castile soap: a tradition associated with olive oil. Our approach brings plant oils and traditional animal fats together, chosen for how they complement one another.
We make our bars by cold process, starting with our own carefully balanced formula. The glycerin formed naturally during soapmaking stays in the finished bar.
We take care of the balance.
You enjoy the bar.
Inside a Well-Made Bar
Every choice changes the whole.
The Ingredients
Five fats and oils. Different characteristics. Each chosen for its contribution.
The Proportions
It matters how much of each goes in—and how the ingredients work together.
The Process
Made from scratch by cold process, with care from formulation through curing.
A closer look at the chemistry
We consider the balance of lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic, ricinoleic, oleic, linoleic, and linolenic fatty acids. Each oil contributes to more than one part of that profile, so a good formula is about the whole blend, supported by testing how the finished soap actually performs.
The Care Behind Every Formula
One Standard. Three Traditions.
Bar soap came first. Foaming soap and body cream followed, each developed through its own rounds of trial and refinement. The formulas differ. The expectation stays the same: make something useful, thoughtful, and worthy of a place in your daily life.
01 / The Traditional Bar
Bar Soap
Five traditional fats and oils, brought together in a purposeful cold-process blend. We look for effective cleaning, satisfying lather, a comfortable feel after washing, and a bar that lasts.
Our standard: cleaning · lather · feel · conditioning · longevity · appearance
02 / Tradition, Bottled
Foaming Soap
Real soap made from tallow and plant oils, brought into modern life in a foaming bottle. We developed it for hands or body, with soft lather that spreads easily and rinses away cleanly.
Our standard: cleaning · lather · softness · clean rinsing · versatility · value
03 / Old-Fashioned Richness
Body Cream
Beef tallow, beeswax, castor oil, jojoba oil, and arrowroot, whipped into a rich cream. We worked toward lasting moisture, a soft consistency, and a pleasant finish—with a little going a long way.
Our standard: moisturizing · finish · softness · scent · appearance · value
The Story Behind the Name
Just Off Main Street.
Soak Street is an imagined little street just off the American Main Street—a place where the goods behind a merchant’s counter carry someone’s name and reputation with them.
Where things are expected to work. Where quality matters. Where something well made is worth coming back for.
Our inspiration reaches from colonial America through the nineteenth century. We bring that spirit into our work today: traditional ingredients, purposeful formulas, and pride in the making.
That’s the street we’re trying to keep alive.
An imagined Soak Street setting
A Long Tradition. Our Next Chapter.
Old Ingredients.
A Story Still Being Written.
Soapmaking has changed across the generations. Our inspiration comes from its traditional roots—and our story adds a small new chapter. Choose an era to explore.
Tallow, Lard, and Olive Oil.
Early American soapmaking drew on familiar animal fats such as tallow and lard. Olive-oil soaps, including imported Castile varieties, were also available. These different traditions gave soapmakers both plant and animal ingredients to work with, long before today’s natural skincare movement.
The Traditional Palette Expands.
During the nineteenth century, coconut oil gained a place in soapmaking alongside older fats and oils. It became a useful ingredient in blended soaps, bringing cleansing and lathering qualities that complemented the character of tallow, lard, and olive oil. Castor oil was also documented in soapmaking by 1871.
Shortages Spark a New Approach.
During World War I, shortages of the fats and oils needed for soap helped drive the development of synthetic cleaning agents in Germany. These early soap substitutes laid groundwork for the synthetic detergents—often called syndets—used in later cleansing products.
A New Kind of Bathing Bar.
In the postwar 1950s, synthetic-detergent cleansing bars entered the personal-care market, offering a different approach to washing skin. Familiar bar-shaped cleansers could now rely on synthetic surfactants rather than traditional soap made by saponifying fats and oils.
We Started With a Bar of Soap.
Shortly after the pandemic hit, we began making soap for ourselves, family, friends, and neighbors. A year of experiments and blind testing led us to the core blend behind every Soak Street bar—and back toward traditional ingredients.
Natural and Traditional. Still.
Our bar soaps bring lard, tallow, olive oil, and coconut oil together, with castor oil chosen to support the lather. Foaming soap and body cream carry the same care forward through their own formulas. Natural and traditional, thoughtfully developed for life today.
From Our Family to Yours
Real. American. Soap.
Progress and Tradition
Carry Something
Good Forward.
You can hold a soap inspired by generations past in one hand and a phone connected to the latest technology in the other.
We love that possibility. Moving forward can mean bringing something enduring with us: a familiar ingredient, a thoughtful craft, a small daily pleasure.
As a young family business, we want to make products we’re proud to share—and give the people who use them something good.
Every person’s skin is different. We believe our traditional blends are worth experiencing for yourself.
Jeff & Lindsey Patty
Founders, Soak Street