Sprecher’s root beer, Green River have cameos in Hulu’s ‘The Bear’
Two of Sprecher Brewing’s sodas have cameos in one of this summer’s buzzier TV shows.
If you watch closely, you can see Sprecher’s Green River and its classic Root Beer being served in episodes of “The Bear,” a dark new FX sitcom that began streaming on Hulu in late June.
In “The Bear,” a young, obsessive chef who’d been a rock star in the finedining world (Jeremy Allen White) comes home to Chicago to run his family’s beef sandwich shop that he’s inherited after a family tragedy.
Tim Cigelske, director of communications for Glendale-based Sprecher, said that the show’s producers, aiming to make the show look as Chicago as possible, called Sprecher for some Green River, a lime-based soda that has been a Chicago tradition since Prohibition. Sprecher acquired the brand in 2021.
Cigelske asked the production company if they’d like some root beer, too. They agreed, so Cigelske drove to the production facility on the south side of Chicago where they were building the set for the show.
You have to look closely for the
Sprecher connections, including a scene in Episode 5, when a character nurses a Sprecher Root Beer.
“It’s like this five-minute scene where one of the main characters is drinking root beer with our label on it, our label out,” Cigelske said of the scene. “It’s a pretty cool moment.”
Although the show premiered June 23, with all eight episodes released on Hulu, the shout-outs to the cameos on social media have taken off this week, Cigelske said.
“The Bear” is one of this summer’s best-reviewed new shows, with a 100% “fresh” rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.