Savvy 7-year-old from ‘Ellen’ and ‘Today’ debuts Shirley Temple drinks for Plano arcade company

A 7-year-old beverage enthusiast named Leo Kelly, famously known by his 217,000 Instagram followers as the Shirley Temple King, created a line of kid-friendly drinks for Main Event Entertainment, headquartered in Plano.

The arcade-bowling-laser tag superstore is now selling the King’s three Shirley Temples at every Main Event in 17 states. The drinks are available at the seven Main Event locations in Dallas-Fort Worth.

In a video interview with The Dallas Morning News, a spirited Kelly described his unexpected rise to fame, appearing on TV alongside celebrities Ellen DeGeneres and Drew Barrymore over the past 15 months. His “brutally honest Shirley Temple reviews,” as the Today show put it, helped catapult the second-grader’s sugary-sweet career.

Kelly was there when NBC news anchor Lester Holt drank his first Shirley Temple. (“That was really, really fun,” Kelly says.)

The 7-year-old’s partnership with Main Event is his first time consulting for a restaurant group. But he’s familiar with the subject matter, of course. Kelly describes to us what he likes about a Shirley Temple: The “bings and bangs” of the carbonation, the sweetness from the grenadine.

Every good Shirley Temple needs three cherries, he says.

“If you have one, you just eat it. It’s gone. It’s simple,” he says. “If you have two, it’s better but still not the best. Three is my favorite.”

He seemed like a fit for Main Event, says Chief Brand Officer Sarah Beddoe.

“When we saw Leo’s reviews for the first time, we knew we had to bring his enthusiasm and expertise into the development of our first-ever line of Shirley Temples,” she says in a statement. “We are all about fun, memorable moments for our guests, and we think this line only adds more to the one-of-kind experience our guests expect when spending time at Main Event.”

Kelly’s three “Shirleys” at Main Event each come with three cherries. Options are:

• The Classic Shirley: ginger ale, Rose’s grenadine and a blue sugar rim
• The Cotton Candy: a Classic Shirley with choice of pink or blue cotton candy on top
• The Floaty: a Classic Shirley with a scoop of vanilla ice cream

Kelly called the partnership “a dream come true.” The drinks start at $2.99.

When he’s not mixing up bevvies for a major entertainment company, Kelly says he’s just a “normal kid” in Connecticut who enjoys playing on his swing set with his siblings and bringing his metal detector to the beach to hunt for treasures during the coronavirus pandemic.

When he grows up, he wants to be a comic book writer or an actor.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.