Cold brown soda bottles and a glass of foaming root beer sit in a warm, rustic bottling room.

Charles Elmer Hires: The Life Behind Hires Root Beer

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At Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition in 1876, Charles E. Hires served root beer and sold packets that allowed customers to make the drink at home. He was not introducing root beer itself to the world. He was bringing his version of an established beverage to a much larger public.

The packets were only the beginning. Advertising and new preparations took the Hires name from household mixing to soda fountains, while its founder established a substantial condensed-milk business. His career was shaped by the commercialization of an existing drink rather than the invention of a new beverage category.

A Quick Look at the Life of Charles E. Hires

Biography Summary

Charles Elmer Hires (1851–1937) was an American pharmacist and businessman associated with the development and mass marketing of Hires Root Beer. Starting in Philadelphia’s drug trade, he sold consumer preparations, promoted root beer through demonstrations and advertising, transferred his growing business to an incorporated company, and pursued manufacturing ventures beyond beverages.

Profile

Full Name: Charles Elmer Hires

Common Name: Charles E. Hires

Born: August 19, 1851, in New Jersey

Died: 1937, aged 85

Nationality: American

Early Occupation: Pharmacist and drugstore proprietor

Best Known For: Developing and popularizing Hires Root Beer as a branded consumer product

Company: Charles E. Hires Company, incorporated in 1890

Other Major Business Interest: Condensed-milk manufacturing

From a New Jersey Apprenticeship to a Philadelphia Drugstore

Charles Elmer Hires was born in southern New Jersey on August 19, 1851. His early career began in the drug trade, where he entered an apprenticeship at about twelve years old. By about sixteen, he had moved to Philadelphia, the city in which his name would become associated with a national beverage business.

His education was practical rather than a conventional pharmacy degree program. In a 1913 interview, reflecting on his training, Hires said he had served a four-year apprenticeship and attended pharmacy lectures occasionally. As he put it, “I was not a registered college of pharmacy student.” He went on to operate a pharmacy at 602 Spruce Street, near Sixth Street.

Root beer was not his first attempt to sell a prepared product. In that same retrospective interview, Hires described noticing fuller’s earth during nearby excavation and turning the material into convenient cleaning cakes that Philadelphia wholesalers could distribute. This was Hires’s recollection of a consumer product he sold before his better-known beverage took shape.

Flavoring extracts and botanical products were also part of his commercial world. His later enterprises would extend well beyond root beer.

A Household Root-Beer Packet Reaches the Centennial Exhibition

Root beer had a history before Hires entered the market. Herbal root teas and related drinks were already known, and root beer had been commercially promoted in Philadelphia as early as 1842. Hires developed a particular preparation that consumers could mix for themselves; he did not invent the beverage category.

In the 1870s, his offering was a dry preparation sold in packets rather than the ready-to-drink bottle that many people now associate with root beer. A packet priced at 25 cents could make five gallons. The format let customers prepare the beverage at home without buying it as an individual serving.

The 1876 Centennial Exhibition provided a different setting for introducing that preparation. Hires served the finished drink to visitors and offered packets for sale. The exposure became an important step in the broader commercialization of his product, followed by growing manufacturing and advertising activity.

A popular later story says Hires acquired his formula during a visit to a New Jersey farm on his honeymoon. The circumstances of the original recipe remain uncertain, and other versions of its origin have circulated. What is clear is that Hires had a dry preparation to sell and publicly promoted it in Philadelphia in 1876.

Advertising Gives Hires Root Beer a Public Identity

As the business expanded, promotion became a central part of selling the drink. Manufacturing took place at a major Philadelphia operation at 117–119 Arch Street. From the 1880s onward, Hires Root Beer appeared in newspapers and magazines, trade cards, children’s promotional material, and other branded objects.

These promotions repeatedly paired the Hires name with memorable images and slogans. An early company advertising card now held by Hagley Museum and Library illustrates the printed approach.

New Products and a Company Bearing His Name

While advertising widened the product’s reach, Hires also changed what customers could buy. In 1888, he marketed a liquid preparation called Hires Improved Root Beer, later known as Hires Household Extract. It offered another way to make the drink at home, alongside the earlier powdered preparation.

Two years later, in 1890, Hires transferred the root-beer business and its formulas to the newly incorporated Charles E. Hires Company. The business was initially capitalized at $300,000. The name now represented a corporation rather than only the proprietor’s individual trade.

The corporation retained the household-preparation business even as its range of products expanded. A new format for soda fountains would follow in 1904.

Temperance Advertising Draws Scrutiny

Some of the messaging attached the product to the temperance movement. Hires advertising called root beer “The Temperance Drink,” positioning it as an alternative to alcoholic beverages. Period promotions also made broad health claims; those claims describe the advertising strategy, not established medical benefits.

The temperance positioning was not free of difficulty. A later account of the company’s history describes a boycott urged by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1895 because of concerns about alcohol in the drink. It reports that Hires publicized a chemist’s analysis finding only a trace amount and that the boycott ended in 1896. The episode illustrates the importance of the product’s public image, without establishing that the drink was entirely free of alcohol.

Condensed Milk Becomes Another Major Enterprise

Hires’s commercial interests extended well beyond root beer. He organized substantial condensed-milk ventures; Harvard Business School associates his work in that industry with six companies and 21 plants across the United States. Dairy manufacturing was a major part of his business career.

One documented development came in 1899, when a condensed-milk plant opened in Malvern, Pennsylvania, near King and Bridge Streets. The local farming area and rail connections formed part of the plant’s operating setting. The Malvern facility also bottled root beer seasonally around 1900–1904, and local history records a sewage-treatment facility constructed for the operations in 1902.

His interests also included vanilla and botanical products. Local histories associate other Hires enterprises with water-related businesses and Cuban sugar operations, though not every company operation can be attributed to his personal management.

Fountain Syrup and a Dispute Over the Hires Name

The incorporated company introduced a fountain syrup in 1904, serving a different way of purchasing root beer. This was not the same product as the liquid household extract Hires had marketed in 1888: one was intended for home preparation, while the other supplied soda-fountain trade.

The distinction between the two products became central to a corporate lawsuit. In 1909, a Kansas soda dispenser sold root beer that another pharmacist had prepared using genuine Hires household extract, rather than the company’s fountain syrup. The Charles E. Hires Company subsequently brought an unfair-competition claim.

On May 14, 1912, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the company’s case in Charles E. Hires Co. v. Villepigue. The court found no evidence of wrongful intent, and the dispenser had stopped the challenged conduct after receiving notice. The decision was not a ruling that the Hires trademark was invalid, nor was it a judgment against Charles Hires personally.

The ruling illustrated the complication of selling genuine Hires products through different channels. The court record also reported annual company fountain-syrup sales above $500,000 and advertising spending of $100,000. Those were figures for the corporate business, not Hires’s personal earnings.

Family Life and a Change in Company Leadership

Alongside his business activities, Hires had family and community ties in the Philadelphia area. His first wife, Clara Kate Smith Hires, died in 1910. He married Emma Waln in 1911. Local historical accounts also connect him with Merion and Haverford residences and support for Merion Friends Meeting and Friends’ Central School.

In 1923, Hires’s son Charles became president of the Charles E. Hires Company. The appointment placed the next generation in the company’s leading office.

Charles Elmer Hires died in 1937, aged 85. He had lived to see the business progress from packets for household use to an incorporated operation with multiple sales formats, extensive advertising, and a presence in industries beyond beverages.

The Hires Name Beyond Its Founder

The Hires Root Beer name continued after Charles E. Hires’s death, but the decisions of the later company and family belong to a different period. In 1960, the Hires family sold a majority interest in the business to Consolidated Foods. A further transfer to Crush International followed in 1962.

The drink was older than Hires, but the branded root-beer business became his most recognizable achievement. From household packets to fountain syrup, its changing formats and wide advertising show how a familiar beverage became a commercial name that endured beyond its founder.

Timeline

These milestones trace Charles E. Hires’s life and the early development of his businesses, followed by key changes to the brand after his death.

Timeline.

August 19, 1851

Charles Elmer Hires is born in New Jersey.

About 1863–1869

He begins training in the drug trade, moves to Philadelphia as a teenager, and establishes himself as a pharmacy proprietor.

1876

Hires serves root beer and sells home-mixing packets at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition.

1880s–1888

The brand expands through print promotion and trade cards. In 1888, Hires markets a liquid preparation later called Hires Household Extract.

1890

The Charles E. Hires Company is incorporated, and Hires transfers his root-beer business and formulas to it.

1895–1896

A retrospective account describes a temperance-organizational boycott and its subsequent end.

1899–1904

A condensed-milk plant opens in Malvern in 1899. The company introduces root-beer fountain syrup in 1904.

1910–1911

Clara Kate Smith Hires dies in 1910; Charles Hires marries Emma Waln in 1911.

May 14, 1912

A federal appeals court affirms dismissal of the Charles E. Hires Company’s unfair-competition action over sales of root beer prepared from genuine Hires household extract.

1923

Hires’s son Charles becomes company president.

1937

Charles Elmer Hires dies at age 85.

1960–1962

After the founder’s death, the Hires family sells a majority interest to Consolidated Foods in 1960; a later transfer to Crush International follows in 1962.

FAQs

Question: Did Charles E. Hires invent root beer?

Answer: No. Root beer and related herbal drinks were known before Charles E. Hires entered the market. He helped make his own preparation widely recognized through packaging, public demonstrations, advertising, and distribution.

Question: Did Charles E. Hires find his root-beer recipe on his honeymoon?

Answer: The honeymoon story is popular, but that particular farm visit and the origin of the recipe have not been established. The documented commercial story centers on his dry preparation and its promotion at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition.

Question: Was Hires Root Beer originally sold in bottles?

Answer: The early product was a powder customers mixed at home. Hires introduced a liquid household preparation in 1888, and the incorporated company brought out a distinct fountain syrup in 1904. Bottling was also part of some operations by the early twentieth century.

Question: What business did Charles E. Hires pursue besides root beer?

Answer: Condensed milk was another substantial business for Hires, whose associated ventures included multiple companies and U.S. plants. His other commercial activities included botanical and vanilla products, with water and sugar interests also recorded.

Question: What did the court decide in the 1912 Hires Root Beer case?

Answer: In Charles E. Hires Co. v. Villepigue, a federal appeals court affirmed dismissal of the corporation’s unfair-competition claim concerning root beer made with genuine Hires household extract. The court found no evidence of wrongful intent; it did not invalidate the Hires trademark or adjudicate Charles Hires’s personal wrongdoing.

Interviews

Charles E. Hires on His Early Career (1913)

An October 1913 interview in American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record, excerpted in a Lower Merion historical article, presents Hires’s own recollections of his apprenticeship, pharmacy lectures, and early cleaning-product venture. The surviving excerpt offers his own retrospective account of that early period, rather than a full transcript of the original conversation.

Read the historical interview excerpt

Biographer Bill Double on Hires and the Root-Beer Origin Story

In a November 2025 PA BOOKS on PCN interview, biographer Bill Double discusses the familiar honeymoon account and the limits of what can be established about it. The conversation also provides context on the advertising history that helped make Hires Root Beer widely known.

Listen to the interview

Sources