<P> Consolidated Foods bought the company from the Hires family in 1960, only to sell Hires two years later to Crush International . Procter & Gamble bought Crush in 1980, and sold it to Cadbury Schweppes in 1989 . Cadbury divested its soft drinks arm in 2008, and the beverage company renamed itself Dr Pepper Snapple Group that year . </P> <P> In Canada, the Hires brand is no longer sold by Dr Pepper Snapple Group; retailers and vending machines have replaced it with Pepsi - owned Mug Root Beer since the 1990s and DPSG markets Stewarts Root Beer in Canada . Hires availability in the U.S. is limited as other Dr. Pepper owned brands like A&W Root Beer are competing for the same bottlers on behalf of the same company . </P> <P> An unrelated drive - in restaurant chain in Utah, Hires Big H, offers "The Big H Root Beer Extract", a modern version of the "Hires Root Beer kit" unsweetened concentrate; would - be home brewers too impatient to carbonate the old - fashioned way using sugar and yeast could use dry ice as a more rapid source of carbon dioxide . </P>

When did they stop making hires root beer