Tacoma soup shop has been ladling the goods for 15 years. What gives it staying power?

At least 1,500 recipes and 15 years later, the owners of Tacoma’s iconic soup shop have proven that you can, in fact, make a living selling soup.

Made from scratch daily, in a kitchen as modest as its humble export, these soups have transported thousands around the world — from Ecuador (locro de papa) to West Africa (maafe, or peanut stew), Turkey (tomato) to Thailand (spicy tofu) — on the belly of a paper pint and a plastic spoon.

“You can’t have a place that just sells soup!” Wendy Clapp recalled telling Todd Deshazo in 2007. “Todd disagreed. He said, ‘Yeah we can.’”

At The News Tribune cafeteria, which they managed before opening this new venture, their soups “were by far the most popular thing we made,” said Clapp.

Sure, restaurants sold soup but usually only one, and rare was a du jour deserving of admiration, let alone return visits. They fearlessly named it Infinite Soups and set up shop at the weekly farmers market.

“It went gangbusters,” according to Clapp.

As fragrant spices drifted down Broadway, added Deshazo, passersby would turn their heads and saunter toward their pots, unable to resist the comfort of a cup.

“I think soup is a democratic food, you know? Every culture eats soup. Every income level eats soup. Everybody eats soup!” said Clapp in November, reflecting on their 15th year at 445 Tacoma Ave. S. (They recently closed the shop at Courthouse Square, next to Outpost Sandwiches, but have plans to resurrect another companion next year.) “I think it’s that that really appeals to me — that there’s nothing fancy about it, there’s nothing contrived about it. It’s available to all.”

CAN THERE BE TOO MUCH SOUP?

The menu at Infinite Soups is simple — it’s soup — but it’s also elaborate.

Clapp arrives before 5 a.m., followed by her daughter Laura Adams, Deshazo or one of their three other employees, who have been with them for several years. She notes any leftovers, an unusual occasion, and maps out, on pen and paper, the L-shaped warming stations that hold about 20 different soups. There are always four categories: creamy, non-creamy, vegetarian, vegan. She knows which soups sell, which have a cult following, and which will appeal to just enough customers to warrant a single batch.

“I have the archetypal customer in my head,” she said. There’s the one who doesn’t eat dairy, or like peppers in his soup; the spice averse, the coconut-milk obsessive, the I-know-what-I-like. “But then you have people who want something exotic.”

At Infinite Soups, said Clapp, “they can all get what they want.”

On a recent Wednesday, Deshazo attempted to persuade a customer to try the lemon cilantro chicken. She politely declined, insisting she didn’t need a taste-test. He persisted. “You’re gonna wonder the rest of your day!” Would she choose the butternut and black bean chili, one of the day’s vegan varietals, or the basil coconut chicken, a non-dairy alternative?

“I’ll get you another day,” said Deshazo knowingly.

In their third year, Adams attempted to collate every soup in their repertoire. When I asked, Deshazo said, “A million!” without blinking.

“She stopped counting when she got to 700,” said Clapp. “That was years ago, and we make up new soups all the time.” She estimates they create around 100 recipes annually.

One reason is seasonality, but related is sourcing: They met Holly and Valerie Foster of Zestful Gardens, an organic farm in East Tacoma, in those early market days, and use whatever produce they don’t sell elsewhere.

“Sometimes you have to come up with something. Sometimes you can’t get an ingredient, and you make adjustments,” explained Clapp. “I pour the wrong thing into the wrong pot, and OK, I’ve gotta reinvent this thing.”

There have been countless one-off soups over the years, she added, “because the magical combination of those ingredients never appeared again.”

Plus, she said, “There are so many soups in the world!”

Ask her for some history and she’ll rattle off soups you might adore and those even the culinarians among us have never tried. Inspiration lies in old cookbooks, in restaurant dishes they imagine reinventing as a soup, in the mystery produce box and the requests of customers.

“Can I recite recipes off the top of my head? Yes,” said Clapp. “I will tell you everything that’s in the soup. I’m not gonna teach you how to cook it.”

Today’s curried autumn vegetable: yams, butternut squash, pumpkin, cauliflower and collards; onion, garlic, ginger; curry, coriander, fennel, paprika, cumin and garam masala.

Great soup, she continued, is about balance: “It’s gotta have sour and salt and a little sweet … and then, it needs to taste like something. It has to have flavor.”

“The sun’s shinin, the soup’s soupin,” hummed Deshazo, just before the third customer of the day walked in to “settle their debts.”

Infinite Soups is cash-only, always has been. I once forgot, and he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You’ll be back.”

INFINITE SOUPS - TACOMA

▪ 445 Tacoma Ave. S, Tacoma, 253-274-0232

▪ Monday-Friday 11 a.m.-7 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

▪ Details: iconic shop with from-scratch soup, about 20 varieties daily — check Facebook for updates; cash only