Nicole Alexander, a cashier for the A&W restaurant on Lodi Avenue, holds up a tray with a hamburger, fries and the famous root beer float during the lunchtime rush Wednesday. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

Lodi restaurant to celebrate 85th birthday in hometown

In June 1919, while Lodians crowded along Pine Street to cheer the return of its World War I veterans, Roy Allen started what would become a summer tradition.

The traveling entrepreneur saw in the hot crowd a chance to use the tasty root beer recipe he'd purchased from an Arizona druggist a few years earlier. Allen borrowed a cart from a luggage man at the nearby train depot and began selling the frothy brew to thirsty customers.

It caught on.

Allen is the "A" in A&W Root Beer, the beverage giant that pioneered drive-in restaurants and perfected ice cream floats. Born in the shadow of the Lodi Arch that hot summer day, the company will kick off its 85th birthday bash in its hometown on Tuesday with cake and 85 cent root beer floats.

"He served root beer for the first time during that parade," said Peter Knight, who owns the A&W restaurant at 216 E. Lodi Ave. with his wife, Annette.

Knight is something of an A&W historian. Glass mugs and jugs, antique road signs and various other memorabilia line the walls of the Lodi restaurant he's owned since 1996. He's even got a one-of-a-kind tin jug from the 1930s that used to hold the brew's concentrate.

It's fitting that he ended up in Lodi, where Allen perfected the blend of roots, berries and barks that remains a secret to this day. After serving from a stand on the street, Allen moved into a storefront at 13 W. Pine St., the current site of the Mirror Mirror clothing boutique.

Back then, the business didn't have an official name, Knight said. It wasn't until he took on a partner, Lodian Frank Wright, in 1922 that the moniker A&W became official.

Allen held on to the name after buying Wright out in 1924, and soon he was selling franchises across the west. In the following decades, A&W Root Beer stands would grow like wildfires, spreading out across the country as answers to the summer heat.

The lunchtime crowd descends upon the A&W restaurant counter Wednesday. The root beer, which was created in Lodi in 1919, is marking its 85th anniversary. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

"It's an interesting story, because he started from nothing," said Lodi historian Ralph Lea. "What was funny, too, was there was a period where we didn't have a store."

The Pine Street business was shuttered when Allen and Wright left for Sacramento in the early 1920s, Knight said. While the rest of the nation fell in love with the creamy brew, its birthplace was without a franchise until 1953, when the Lodi Avenue location opened.

Despite the lull, Lodians embrace being from the place where it all started, Knight said. People will often come by with mugs, stuffed dolls and other A&W collectibles from over the years to donate to the owner's collection, much of which sits in glass cases along the dining room walls.

"People take pride to know a business of such high standing started right here in Lodi," Knight said.

The A&W Root Beer bear sits inside the A&W restaurant on Lodi Avenue. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

This isn't the first birthday celebration Knight has held, either. In 1999, he and his employees set the world record for the largest root beer float when they mixed 2,5621/2 gallons of ice cream and root beer in honor of the business' 80th birthday.

Celebrations will be held at A&W restaurants across the country, said company spokesman Rick Maynard. The party will likely be particularly sweet along Lodi Avenue, however.

"I'm sure the one in Lodi will be among the best," Maynard said. "(Knight) is the perfect guy to have running a restaurant in our hometown."

A&W Root Beer, which was created in Lodi in 1919, will mark its 85th anniversary next week with celebration at the local A&W restaurant on Lodi Avenue. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

The recipe for A&W root beer remains one of the closely guarded secrets of the restaurant industry, Knight said. Though the ingredients are known -- everything from wintergreen to anis to sassafras to cattail root -- the exact mixture is locked away from the public eye.

After all, you don't mess with a taste that's lasted 85 years.

"It's still made pretty much the same way as it was in 1919," Knight said.