Executive of Dad’s Root Beer

Roy Gurvey

Roy Gurvey, who built Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer into one of America’s favorite soft drinks before Coke and Pepsi came to dominate the industry, has died at the age of 92.

Gurvey died Aug. 12 of heart failure at a Laguna Hills hospital, his family said.

Born June 21,1923, in New York, Gurvey grew up in Chicago and went to work as a sales manager for the root beer company, which for years bottled its product in a turreted brick factory building dominated by a large Dad’s sign.

Gurvey helped build the company into a national and international brand, eventually pushing sales to 12 million cases a year, his son Scott said.

His work put the company right behind A& W in the root beer category, but Gurvey liked to point out that A&W sold directly from roadside stands, while all of Dad’s sales were from bottled and canned drinks.

In 1971, Dad’s was bought by what later became IC Industries, which also bought up the then- popular lemonlime soft drink Bubble Up. In 2007, Hedinger Brands bought Dad’s, which is now headquartered in Jasper, Ind.

Gurvey left the company in1988 and moved to Orange County.

“My father got out at the endof the era,” Scott Gurvey said, as the major brands continued to dominate bottling operations.

Survivors include another son, Mark; two grandchildren; and two great- grandchildren. Gurvey’s wife died in 2006.