I think you missed the point 2n2r5 was making for you.
You model the drink sticks once in openscad, and setup a variable called 'DrinkText' - then in the openscad program, wherever you want to place that text you use $DrinkText .
Then hit F6, export to stl. Done.
When you want to change the name - Simply change the text assigned to DrinkText, and then hit F6, and it will recreate that same model with the new text on it.
You need to simply think in terms of 'what text i want to print' is simply the contents of a variable, and then in the openscad model code, you dont type 'what text i want to print', but rather the variable name. Then all you ever need to do to change 'the text' is change whats written for that variable. The model settings deal with making that 'text' appear as 3D etc etc.
You need to explore how 'Customizer' works at Thingiverse. So you'll see there is a tool, and all that needs to change between each model is the text you type in - everything else is static in the openscad file.
A really bad example, but heres the same concept: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:167866 . Open it in 'customizer' and you'll see you just change the text... all 'customizer' files are are Openscad files... so you can do the same thing at home in openscad without uploading to thingiverse.
Problem solved.