Bottle of Hires Root Beer

A Bottle of Hires Root Beer is the packaging for one of America's earliest commercially produced soft drinks, invented in 1876 by pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires (1851 - 1937), 10 years before Coca-Cola launched.

Bottle background

Hires was born on a farm near Roadstown, in Cumberland County, New Jersey. By age six or seven he was already collecting old bottles and displaying them in a play drugstore he had built himself.

At the age of 12, Hires was apprenticed for four years in a small country town drug store run by his brothers-in-law. In 1867, aged 16, he moved to Philadelphia and became a drugstore clerk.

At night, to better himself, he studied to become a qualified pharmacist. After passing his exams and saving $400, Hires opened his own drugstore in the city's Sixth and Spruce streets.

Hires root tea

While on his honeymoon in New Jersey, Hires had some herbal tea that he found delicious. When he was back in Philadelphia, he experimented until he had something similar. He started selling Hires Root Tea in the city and continued refining the recipe.

At the time, the Temperance Movement was popular within Quaker circles and Hires was committed to the cause. However, a Baptist minister named Russell Conwell suggested renaming it Hires Root Beer, believing working men would rather buy something called beer than something labelled tea.

This was despite the fact that the beverage only contained a trace amount of alcohol and was therefore considered an Innocent Trade.

Hires Root Beer was launched at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Hires marketed the drink as “a temperance drink of the highest medicinal value.”

Mass production

By 1895, Hires claimed that over 15 million gallons had been sold in the previous year. At the time, this would have been sufficient to give every man, woman and child in the United States five glasses each.

To accommodate the demand, a vast manufacturing plant was built by the Delaware River. Sales continued to climb, and this scale of bottle production helped pioneer the American soft drinks industry.

Becoming a Quaker

Hires did not become a Quaker until later in life, joining the Society of Friends through his second marriage. He went on to support Quaker institutions with the same energy he had once poured into root beer.

He funded the restoration of the historic Merion Meeting House near Philadelphia, where William Penn had worshipped, and wrote a short history of it.

In 1918, as the First World War raged, Hires signed a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting letter opposing it. It was a difficult stance to hold, with patriotic feeling running high, but he stood alongside fellow Friends for peace.

He died in 1937, at age 85, remembered in the press as the man who had built root beer into a national drink.

The Hires name now belongs to Keurig Dr Pepper, though the root beer itself has since been discontinued. The bottle remains, even if the drink inside has been drunk.