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Tom Stewart (1969)
THE HISTORY OF A&W AND REED AND BELL
The driving force behind A&W Root Beer was Roy Allen, an ambitious entrepreneur who at the turn of the 20th century became widely known throughout the southwestern United States for buying, renovating, and selling older hotels and motels. Having become acquainted with a recipe for root beer that a pharmacist had given him at a soda fountain while he was arranging a hotel deal in Tucson, Arizona, Allen impetuously purchased the recipe and opened a hamburger and root beer stand in Lodi, California, in June 1919.
With an innate sense of what was popular among the people at the time, Allen knew that by playing on the name of "root beer" he could attract alcohol drinkers into his establishment, especially since he decorated it as an old, well-worn saloon, complete with bar and barstools. The Volstead Act of 1919 had prohibited the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages, so soldiers returning from the World War I battlefields in France flocked to Allen's root beer stand, finding the beverage a palatable substitute. By the summer of 1920, in order to meet the growing demand for his product, Allen opened a second root beer stand in Stockton, California.
With more and more people clamoring for his product, Allen formed a partnership with Frank Wright, one of his employees, in order to establish five more outlets in the Sacramento area. After formally naming their product "A&W Root Beer" (the name reflecting the initials of the two partners), more outlets were opened in Houston, Texas, in 1922. Capitalizing on the increasing mobility of the American public, and the fact that more people were purchasing automobiles, Allen came up with the idea of transforming the root beer stands into drive-in restaurants. As people headed downtown in their cars on steamy summer evenings, Allen attracted them to his root beer stand by providing "car hop" services. Modeled after the bell hops of exclusive hotels, "tray boys" were hired to deliver root beer to customers while they sat in the comfort of their automobiles.
By 1924, with the popularity of his soft drink and drive-in outlet assured, Allen decided to buy Wright's share of the business. At the same time, Allen registered the name "A&W Root Beer" and the A&W logo with the United States Patent and Trademark office, and began a comprehensive strategy to expand his business throughout the western United States. His first move was to establish a franchise restaurant chain for A&W Root Beer Stands. Selling the rights to franchises in Oregon, California, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona to two businessmen, H.C. Bell and Lewis Reed, the outlets within these states were renamed "Reed & Bell Root Beer."
Then Allen moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and restarted his business. By selling A&W franchises throughout the United States, except for the five states where he had sold the rights to Bell and Reed, Allen created the very first restaurant chain in America. Demanding and meticulous in his franchise agreements, Allen stipulated in each contractual arrangement the precise design and floorplan of each root beer drive-in restaurant, the design and weight of the mugs his root beer was to be served in, and the mixture of the brew that had established his reputation and had given him a fortune. By the end of the 1920s, the A&W Root Beer Drive-In was becoming a common sight to many Americans.
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