Dad's Root Beer is a

root beer Root beer is a sweet North American soft drink traditionally made using the root bark of the sassafras tree '' Sassafras albidum'' or the vine of '' Smilax ornata'' (known as sarsaparilla, also used to make a soft drink, sarsaparilla) as the ...

created in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

in 1937 by Ely Klapman and Barney Berns. It is currently owned by Hedinger Brands, LLC, and sold and marketed by the Dad's Root Beer Company LLC.

History

Dad's Root Beer was established in the 1930s by partners Barney Berns and Ely Klapman in the basement of Klapman's Chicago-area home. The first trademark registration was filed on September 24, 1938, granted on February 14, 1939, to the Dad's Root Beer Company of Chicago, with the product name in use since February 1937. Jules Klapman, son of co-founder Ely, successfully took the Dad's brand international. The name Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer was selected in honor of Ely Klapman's father. Dad's Root Beer was the first product to use the six pack format invented by the Atlanta Paper Company in the 1940s. Dad's also introduced the half-gallon bottle, becoming the first brand to market this size. Dad's was marketed as a family: the "Junior" size was the smallest, 7, 10 or 12 ounces. "Mama" was a quart bottle, and "Papa" was a half gallon. (The image of the young boy featured on the "Junior" size bottle is Barney Berns' son, Gene.) A common promotion in the 1940s was the 1 cent sale - purchase the Papa half gallon at regular price and get the Mama quart for 1 cent. The Klapman and Berns families sold rights to the Dad's name and logo to

IC Industries PepsiAmericas, Inc. was the world's second-largest bottler of Pepsi-Cola products, under contract with product owner PepsiCo. PepsiAmericas also held contracts to produce beverages for Dr Pepper Snapple Group and smaller regional brands. PepsiA ...

of Chicago in 1971. The

Monarch Beverage Company The Monarch Beverage Company Inc is a diversified, international beverage company based in Atlanta, Georgia. The company's CEO is Jacques Bombal. The company was founded in 1965 by Frank Armstrong. Monarch Beverage Company aimed to establish i ...

of Atlanta acquired Dad's from IC Industries in 1986. At that time Dad's was distributed by the Coca-Cola bottler network, sold 12 million cases annually, and held the second largest share of the root beer category behind A & W. In 2007 Dad's Root Beer was purchased, along with the

Bubble Up Bubble Up is a lemon-lime soft drink brand created in 1919, by Sweet Valley Products Co. of Sandusky, Ohio. It is now manufactured by the Dad's Root Beer Company, LLC and owned by Hedinger Brands, LLC for the United States, Canada, and Me ...

, Dr. Wells, and Sun Crest brands, by Hedinger Brands, LLC and licensed to the Dad's Root Beer Company, LLC. The company headquarters is now located in

Jasper, Indiana Jasper is a city in, and the county seat of, Dubois County, Indiana, United States, located along the Patoka River. The population was 16,703 at the 2020 census making it the 48th largest city in Indiana. On November 4, 2007, Dubois County retur ...

Flavors

Dad's makes the following brands/flavors: * Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer * Diet Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer * Dad's Old Fashioned Cream Soda * Dad's Old Fashioned Orange Cream Soda * Dad's Old Fashioned Red Cream Soda * Dad's Old Fashioned Blue Cream Soda *

* Sun Crest Orange * Dr. Wells

Advertising

The company's signs on the Edens Expressway ( I-94) and one near Lake Shore Drive asking "Have you had it lately?" became fixtures on the Chicago landscape. The product's jingle was a simple line sung several times, to a conga beat, with the "kick" coming on "Beer": \addlyrics In the mid-1950s, Dad's sponsored on a regional basis the syndicated TV adventure series

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, is a fictional American comic book jungle girl heroine, originally published primarily by Fiction House during the Golden Age of Comic Books. She was the first female comic book character with her own title, with he ...

. During the 1970s, Chicago-based television advertising for Dad's featured a different jingle sung by an ensemble with the following lyrics: (Announcer would read the ad copy while a short instrumental section of the jingle played, then the song continued)

IndyCar sponsorship

Dad's Root Beer became an IZOD Indycar associate sponsor in 2007. It evidently continued the relationship at least as far as 2011.

References

External links