How a Once Broke Philadelphia Pharmacist Turned A Simple But Delicious Pie Recipe into a Thirst Quenching Beer (That Really Wasn’t A Beer)
How a Once Broke Philadelphia Pharmacist Turned A Simple But Delicious Pie Recipe into a Thirst Quenching Beer (That Really Wasn’t A Beer)
And was the driving force for creating a $881 million specialty beverage industry from scratch
Shearing is a hard job.
A really hard job.
In fact shearers have a saying that what they do is “the hardest job in the world.”
It’s physically demanding, with a person burning as much as 5,000 calories a day.
And so far, no one has invented any kind of technology that makes it easier to do.
Like centuries past, it’s a job still done by hand.
But it’s also a dirty job.
That’s because a sheep’s wool coat not only picks up dirt from being out in pastures and fields all day but often gets greasy. This means a shearer has to clean the wool.
One of the earliest methods for doing just that was using something called “fuller’s earth.” Fuller’s earth is a highly absorbent type of clay that is made of volcanic ash. However, it’s not scientifically known as fuller’s earth … that was a nickname given to the person in the shearing process that cleaned the wool.
They were called fullers, and using the volcanic ash based clay, their job was to remove impurities from the wool before it was tightened into cloth.
And it just happens that one astute man realized that if the clay could remove dirt from a sheep’s wool, well it might also be able to clean people’s clothes.
A Little Clay Goes A Long Way
Charles Elmer Hires didn’t come from a rich family.
He was born on August 19, 1851, on his family's farm outside of Roadstown, New Jersey and was the sixth of 10 children of John Dare Hires and Mary (Williams) Hires.
Although they weren’t wealthy, Mary counted among her ancestors Martha Washington wife of President George Washington.
Because the family lacked funds to send Charles to better schools, he had very little formal education. In fact he spent much of his time working odd jobs in order to help feed his family.
For instance, he took a job at a local pharmacy when he was just 12 years old. There was something about working in that environment that Charles loved. And he worked hard at it too. That experience was enough to entice him to move to Philadelphia and to take up a similar job but for a much larger pharmacy.
Then by 1867, Charles was working at a large wholesale drug company while attending night classes at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and the Jefferson Medical College. After finishing his schooling, Charles then headed to the town of Bridgeton, Pennsylvania, where he helped operate a local pharmacy with two other men.
However, the venture was short-lived, with the pharmacy not making as much money as they hoped. So Charles eventually made his way back to Philadelphia. Not giving up on the idea of being a pharmacist, in December 1869, at the age of 18, he borrowed some money from family and friends and opened his very own pharmacy.
In his pharmacy, Charles mixed together different herbs selling them as various health potions. He also developed a variety of flavoring extracts that local seems “to take a liking to.”
At the time, Philadelphia was in a boom and new buildings were popping up all over the city. Construction and road workers were everywhere, even on the same street where Charles had opened his pharmacy.
One day while walking to his place of business, Charles watched as workers were digging the foundation for a new building when they came across a strange-looking, clayish type of soil.
While the workers had no clue as to what it was, Charles knew immediately that it was "fuller's earth." Yep, the same clay fullers used to clean wool they sheared from sheep.
An idea was now brewing in his mind … could the same clay be sold as a new kind of household cleaner … one that worked especially well on wool clothes?
The only way to know was to test his idea.
So he asked the workers if they would bring the brown-gray colored clay they had just dug up to his house, to which they agreed. He had them put the large amount of clay in his cellar. And it’s there with the help of a hired hand that the two men shaped the clay into little round cakes.
Then they put the clay cakes into small containers with a label on the front that read "Hires Special Cleaner." Since he already knew the drug store business well, Charles figured that would be the ideal place to sell his new cleaner.
And he was right.
Within a short amount of time, Charles sold enough of Hires Special Cleaner that he managed to earn $6,000. That was a fairly substantial sum of money in those days. In fact it was enough that could now pay off all of his debts.
Let’s Make A New Kind of Beer
Now that he was debt free, Charles decided it was time to marry his sweetheart, Clara Kate Smith. In 1875, the two “tied the knot” in very low key ceremony. They spent their honeymoon on a boarding farm in New Jersey.
The land lady who owned the farm cooked and served the meals during their stay. On one occasion, she served Charles and Clara a special pie made of sassafras bark, wintergreen, sarsaparilla root, hops, juniper berries, pipsissewa leaves and a few other herbs.
It was one of the most delicious and sweetest things Charles had ever tasted. Intrigued, he asked the lady if she’d share her recipe with him, which she did.
Once the honeymooners returned home, Charles began experimenting with the recipe. He also asked two medical college professors if they’d be willing to help him out. Eventually, the trio managed to create a dry concentrate of the recipe that could be mixed with water, sugar, and yeast to produce a sweet drink.
Since the drink was made from herbs, Charles figured he’d be better off selling it as a new type of medicinal drink … one that was not only refreshing but tasted well. In fact he planned to market it as Hires Herb Tea.
But a friend managed to change his mind. That friend was Dr. Russell H. Conwell. A minister, author, and founder of Philadelphia's Temple University, Conwell told Charles that tough Pennsylvania coal miners would never drink an herb tea. Instead they’d prefer something that was similar to beer.
Since his powered drink came from rooted plants of the earth, and the pipsissewa leaves gave it a distinct taste … Charles named his concentrated mix "root beer." And to draw lots of attention to his new root beer drink, he planned on showing it off in a big way.
At 24 years old, Charles Hires introduced his new concoction in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. It was a great success. People loved it. Now that he knew his drink sold well, Charles next move was selling it outside the local area and in places he knew customers frequent … their local pharmacy.
Back then it wasn’t uncommon for pharmacies to also have soda fountains in their establishments. By placing his root beer here, he could now reach an even greater audience. And once again he was right.
Customers loved his new beer that wasn’t a beer.
But that wasn’t enough. Charles was on a roll and his next move was selling his pre-mixed concentrate at 25-cent per package. Moms could now mix up a 5-gallon batch of root beer at home.
And the hits continued. By the early 1880s, Charles Hires began selling three-ounce bottles of already made root beer. He advertised heavily in local newspapers like the Philadelphia Public Ledger and quickly created a booming market for his product.
Realizing that root beer's appeal could easily extend beyond the Philadelphia area, Charles decided to promote his drink nationwide. He purchased a color advertisement on the back page of the Ladies' Home Journal.
From One Root Beer to Another
From that moment forward, root beer became a standalone soda category. And expectedly so, several other entrepreneurs followed in his footsteps.
Like Roy W. Allen a local hotelier who lived in Arizona.
Roy happened to stop in at a local pharmacy that served root beer at its soda fountain. But the pharmacist who owned the store said the root beer he served came from his very own recipe and that it was much better than anything else on the market.
Allen took a sip and was convinced the man was right. So without hesitation, he bought the rights the root beer recipe. Shortly after making the purchase, Roy moved to the town of Lodi, California.
And on June 20, 1919, he officially opened his first root beer stand, which happened to be the same evening as the city-wide homecoming parade in honor of the town’s World War I soldiers. He charged patrons 5 cents a mug.
Not surprisingly his root beer was a huge hit amongst the thirsty attendees.
Knowing he had a successful product, Roy Allen partnered with a former friend Frank Wright. The two were eager to expand their root beer business and decided the fastest way to do so was leasing out root beer stands to other operators.
But they’d need a special name for their stands … one that would be easy to remember but catchy too. What better than to use their own names and so they created A&W (Allen & Wright) Root Beer.
One year later in 1922, Roy and Frank Wright opened the first ever A&W drive-in restaurant located in Sacramento, California. It was a resounding success.
In 1924, Roy & Frank took a giant leap and franchised their business, becoming the first official franchised restaurant chain in the country. By 1925 there were A&W restaurants all throughout California, Texas, and Utah.
In the same year, Frank was “bought out” from the business while Roy continued to expand operations. Five years later his franchise business had just under 200 locations in the Western and Midwestern United States.
Roy Allen retired in 1950, selling the root beer business to a Nebraskan businessman, Gene Hurtz.
Mr. Hurtz continued expanding and growing the A&W root beer empire. In 1956 A&W opened its first foreign store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, followed, over time, by Guam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, and Bangladesh.
By 1960 the company had over 2,000 restaurants worldwide.
In 1963 Hurtz sold A&W, now the largest fast-food drive-in chain in the world, to the J. Hungerford Smith Company, who had been manufacturing A&W Root Beer concentrate since 1921. In 1966 the J. Hungerford Smith Company was purchased by the United Fruit Company. In 1970 United Fruit was acquired by the AMK Corporation, who formed the United Brands Company.
In 1971 United Brands, capitalizing on the success of A&W Root Beer, launched A&W Beverages, Inc., distributing their popular beverages in bottles and cans to retail establishments, initially in Arizona and California, eventually nationwide.
In 2018 A&W Beverages became part of multi-billion-dollar Keurig Dr Pepper.
Today, there are approximately 1,000 A&W restaurants in the U.S. and Southeast Asia (via A&W). Most A&W locations still use a paddle-operated brewing kettle to make their own root beer in-house daily.
A&W restaurants’ employs roughly 35,160 employees and generates $99.4 million in annual revenues. Guests at A&W Restaurants in the U.S. and Asia consume more than 1.1 million gallons of root beer a year.
As for Charles Hires … the originator of root beer … the company remained in family hands until 1960 and through a series of sales over the next 30 years, ended up being acquired by Cadbury Schweppes in 1989. In 2008 Cadbury Schweppes spun off the soft drink division into the current Dr. Pepper Snapple Group.
After developing his beloved root beer beverage, Mr. Hires went on to develop a second successful business as a noted manufacturer of condensed milk.
Charles Hires died of a stroke on July 31, 1937, at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, while preparing to leave for a fishing trip. He’ll always be remembered as the man who created the root beer craze and the driving force behind the $881 million specialty drink.
Awesome Quotes by Awesome People
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