Belfast Old Fashion Root Beer Coofee Mug Pricing.

When most people remember of Mug Root Beer, they might associate it with a slice of their favorite pizza, a fizzy root beer float or even that grinning bulldog featured on the soda label. But at that place's a high take a chance that nigh people won't connect it to San Francisco — and they'd be wrong not to.

The root beer brand has Bay Surface area origins dating back to 1940, when it first hit the market in San Francisco equally Belfast Root Beer. It was offset fabricated by San Francisco-based Belfast Drink Company, by and large known as a sparkling water and ginger ale maker since 1877.

The company connected to make its own brand of sodas, but by 1925, information technology was bought by another locally based entity, the New Century Beverage Company, co-founded by a young local named Angelo Campodonico.

A Belfast Beverage Company advertisement shown near Lombard Street in San Francisco in 1946. — A Belfast Beverage Visitor advertisement shown near Lombard Street in San Francisco in 1946.
OpenSFHistory / wnp27.50283

Campodonico outset got his starting time in the nutrient industry every bit a busboy at North Beach's Fior d'Italian republic in the early on 1900s. He didn't keep the job for long before he ventured off on his own to open a saloon in 1907. The following twelvemonth, he expanded past owning a bar and co-founded the New Century Potable Company, a soda bottling company in San Francisco that besides produced some fizzy drinks of its own before acquiring the Belfast Beverage Company.

Past the fourth dimension Campodonico purchased the Belfast visitor, he experienced success with a different soda that is likewise still sold to this day: Crush soda. The orange citrus soda was added to New Century Beverage Visitor's roster in 1918 and, as historic manufactures draw, people virtually lost their minds at the ingenuity.

"This was named Orange Trounce, made from the real juice of California oranges, and was an innovation that immediately won the contest of the public," the San Francisco Relate wrote in 1927.

A view of the New Century Beverage Company at a facility in San Francisco around 1927. The company bought the Belfast Beverage Company two years earlier. — A view of the New Century Beverage Visitor at a facility in San Francisco around 1927. The company bought the Belfast Drink Company 2 years earlier.
San Francisco Chronicle archives

Two years after the Belfast purchase, in 1927, Campodonico moved his soda manufacturing plant to a much larger facility at 820 Pacific St. in Chinatown, where the mod facility was lauded as growth to the city. Information technology too saw an upgrade with a fleet of trucks, which helped brand smoother deliveries than the horse delivery organization of earlier in the 1900s.

Campodonico steadily gained success in the beverage manufacture and became a fixture in the community; he often encouraged locals to stop by the plant and see the soda-making process for themselves.

"We accept customers in all parts of the city, and even have a route as far as Halfmoon Bay downward to the peninsula, and nosotros believe those who potable our products would similar to run into how they are made, peculiarly the carbonated beverages," Campodonico told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1927.

Then in 1936, Campodonico saturday on a gold mine when the New Century Beverage Visitor gained permission to franchise Pepsi-Cola products and became the Bay Area arm of their operation, under i condition: He had to sell 1,200 cases of Pepsi a calendar month, a huge sales number at the time. Compare that effigy to the company's bottling production numbers by 1986, which was cranking out one,200 cases a minute at three different Bay Area facilities.

"It's the second-ranking privately owned Pepsi bottler in the country — 750 employees, three bottling plants and $100 million-plus in revenues," the Chronicle wrote in 1986.

Over the years, the soda brand evolved its advertising methods to match the times. The catchphrase, "You haven't tasted Root Beer like this in years!" filled 1950s newspaper advertisements and billboards featuring large glass vessels of soda topped with thick, white cream.

A Belfast Old Fashioned Mug Root Beer advertisement featured in a San Francisco Examiner in 1955. — A Belfast One-time Fashioned Mug Root Beer advertizement featured in a San Francisco Examiner in 1955.
The San Francisco Examiner

It was effectually this time that the soda took on the title Belfast Former Fashioned Mug Root Beer, a mouthful of a proper noun. That name was featured in another very 1950s advertizement at the fourth dimension, where the soda visitor got creative and illustrated cartoon characters having a one thousand time while imbibing the sugary beverage. A grapheme with a buzz cut tells the reader, "Anybody who doesn't drink Belfast Old Fashioned Mug Root Beer is a square," while another character who's dancing proclaims, "The whole gangs drinking Mug Root Beer these days." In other words, if yous're not drinking Mug Root Beer, you tin't sit with us.

Eventually, the soda'due south name was officially shortened to Mug Root Beer, and the company attempted to add newer tag lines to their brand over the years. In the 1970s, one commercial on radio station KFRC claimed the soda was "the one root beer with true typhoon taste." By the 1980s, TV jingles added their own tag lines that claimed Mug Root Beer "is one of a kind" and another that rejoiced, "I love my mug!" featuring comedian Phyllis Diller.

Mug Root Beer fifty-fifty became the preferred potable of Jahja Ling, who in 1983 became the associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. In a profile piece by the San Francisco Relate, Ling shared that he couldn't make it through his rigorous 13-hour workday without Mug Root Beer. He reportedly carried ii cans of the beverage with him during his shifts.

Different Campodonico family members continued to operate the New Century Drinkable Company until they finally sold the company to Pepsi in 1986. At that point, Mug Root Beer became role of the Pepsi family unit, which later got rid of the root beer vessel completely and opted for a bulldog — quirkily named "Canis familiaris" — as its new soda mascot.

In 2019, a dated advertisement for "Belfast Old Fashioned Mug Root Beer" resurfaced in the East Bay some decades afterwards it was first painted. The 1950s soda advertisement was discovered in Oakland near the Fruitvale BART station. San Francisco Ghost Signs, a weblog and Instagram account, shared that the finding occurred during the remodel of a building at San Leandro Street and 34th Avenue. The painted billboard had been concealed under wooden panels and, despite its years unnoticed, the advertisement was in relatively decent shape. Another poster painted onto stucco was found at 1521 Webster St. in Alameda earlier the 2019 discovery and promptly restored.

Locals won't discover the product facility in San Francisco anymore. Pepsi continued producing its sodas in the metropolis and subsequently moved to a manufacturing plant at 17th Street and Valencia Street in the Mission before eventually closing the San Francisco outpost in the early 1990s. Though with some luck, yous might notwithstanding grab remnants of vintage Belfast Old Fashioned Mug Root Beer billboards to remind us of its Bay Area roots.

More than Bay Surface area food origins