Over the weekend, I saw 2L bottles of Hires Root Beer for sale in a Kroger in North Myrtle Beach, SC. I thought that Hires had been pretty much phased out by DPS in favor of the more popular A&W. I used to buy Hires for my brother when it was available around Concord, NC, but it seemed to vanish from stores in that area some time ago. That was why I was surprised to find it in SC.

According to the cap, the Hires was bottled by Independent Beverages of Charlotte. They are the ones who handle most of the DPS drinks in the area where I live, but Hires is not sold around here anymore. Does anyone know why the distribution of Hires is so strange?

For what it's worth, that same Kroger store also sold Red Rock Cola and Pangleheimers Beverages (both from West Jefferson) in glass bottles.

Keep in mind that Independent is a producer more than a distributor. They make Food Lion sodas, and Hires and Crush for a lot of smaller operations. If they already sell A&W in their distribution area, it wouldn't make much sense for them to also sell Hires, unless Hires was a good seller, imho.

Hires Root Beer 12-Packs can be found in Iowa at the Fareway grocery stores.

They also make the Harris Teeter soda brands and they produce A&W for many places (including where I live)

Last time Iwas in Myrtle Beach Pepsi sold A&W.

If Pepsi distributes A&W in the Myrtle Beach area, that would explain why Hires is being sold there.

IBC has no distribution, they only manufacture. They sell to companies that have the distribution rights for a particular franchised brand. Most of the Cadbury distributors in NC (Choice USA, DPWJ, Piedmont Cheerwine, Long Beverage, etc.) use A&W and have no need for Hires. Root beer is a very weak seller around here and there's no need to carry more than one brand in a distributor's set. You've probably noticed that CCBCC didn't even distribute Barq's in retail packages until recently.

Sundrop of Concord is an exception -they've carried Hires dating back from a time when the Crush, Sundrop and Hires brands were all owned by P&G/Crush International. Their distirbution area only covers Cabarrus, Stanly, Rowan and Iredell counties. You'd have to look hard in those areas to find Hires.

You could call Sundrop of Concord to check, but I don't know if their office is back to normal since the shooting.

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90 years of Cheer...1917-2007

I was under the impression that IBC had quit bottling Hires entirely. My interest in Hires is because of my brother; he loves the stuff. (When I do have a root beer, my personal favorite is Hank's Diet Root Beer.) The distribution of root beer around here is interesting. I have seen Barq's appearing on the shelves in many places around here lately as well as Mug (I don't care for either one of those). For quite a while, the only major brand root beer around here was A&W.