A root beer made in a Chicago basement
Dad’s Root Beer is an American root beer brand created in Chicago in 1937 by two partners, Ely Klapman and Barney Berns. The pair developed the recipe in the basement of Klapman’s home in the Chicago area, a modest start for a brand that would go on to national distribution. The product name traces to a family connection: the drink was called Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer in honor of Ely Klapman’s father, a choice that gave the brand its warm, homespun identity from the very beginning.
The paperwork followed soon after the recipe. The first trademark registration was filed in September 1938 and granted in early 1939 to the Dad’s Root Beer Company of Chicago, with the product name recorded as having been in use since February 1937. From that foundation the two partners built a business that would spread far beyond Illinois within a few years.
Packaging that changed the industry
Dad’s is remembered as much for two packaging innovations as for its flavor, and those innovations left a lasting mark on the soft-drink business. It was the first product to use the six-pack carrier, the paperboard format developed by the Atlanta Paper Company in the 1940s that grouped bottles into a single carry-home unit. The six-pack went on to become one of the standard ways Americans buy beverages, and Dad’s role as an early adopter tied the brand to a genuine turning point in retail packaging.
The brand also introduced the half-gallon bottle, becoming the first to bring that large size to market. Together the two formats gave Dad’s a reputation for practical, family-minded packaging, which the company reinforced with its marketing. It promoted a “Dad’s Family” of bottle sizes, giving each a nickname: the twelve-ounce “Junior,” the quart-sized “Mama,” and the large half-gallon “Papa.” That playful lineup matched the brand’s homey name and helped it stand out on the shelf.
Building a national brand
Dad’s grew quickly from its basement origins into a widely distributed brand. Within roughly a decade of its founding, its owners had built a network of well over a hundred franchise bottlers producing and distributing the yellow-and-blue-branded root beer across the continent. That franchise model, in which local bottlers licensed the right to make and sell the drink in their territories, was the standard route to national reach in the era, and Dad’s used it effectively to turn a regional recipe into a coast-to-coast name.
The taste itself was a traditional root beer, and the brand leaned on its old-fashioned character throughout its history. The combination of a familiar flavor, memorable packaging, and steady distribution made Dad’s a fixture of the American root beer market through the middle of the twentieth century.
Changing owners over the decades
As the soft-drink industry consolidated, Dad’s passed through a succession of corporate owners, a common fate for heritage sodas of its generation. The brand became part of larger beverage portfolios over the years and is now associated with Hedinger Brands and the Dad’s Root Beer Company organization that carries its name. Through those transitions the recipe and identity were preserved, and the brand continued to be produced rather than shelved. Notably, the company connected to Dad’s also came to hold the rights to other classic sodas, including the long-running lemon-lime brand Bubble Up, gathering several pieces of American soda heritage under one roof.
Still sold as a nostalgia brand
Dad’s Root Beer remains in production today. It is sold as a nostalgia and heritage brand, available through grocery and general retailers as well as outlets that specialize in classic sodas. While it no longer commands the market presence it held at its mid-century peak, it has retained enough recognition and demand to stay in continuous production, and its name still signals an old-fashioned root beer to the drinkers who reach for it.
A lasting mark on American soda
The legacy of Dad’s Root Beer runs deeper than its own sales figures. Its early adoption of the six-pack and its introduction of the half-gallon bottle influenced how the entire beverage industry packaged and sold its products, contributions that outlived any single flavor trend. Combined with a durable brand identity built around family and old-fashioned taste, those innovations secured Dad’s a permanent place in the history of American soft drinks. More than eight decades after two partners mixed the first batch in a Chicago basement, the brand endures as both a working product and a landmark in how the country came to buy its sodas.
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