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Couple dusts off '30s recipe, brand name to serve up frosty glass of nostalgia

By Nora Caley
Special to the Denver Rocky Mountain News

Bonnie and Mario Mapelli bought a root beer company in 1990. The only problem? The company wasn't making root beer any more.

When the Mapellis bought the Duffy Co. in 1990, founder Frank Duffy had been dead for nearly 30 years. The root beer manufacturer Duffy started stopped making the beverage more than a decade ago, focusing instead on Bloody Mary and other drink mixes.

In 1995, the Mapellis decided to resuscitate a brand that had made its debut in the 1930s. The Colorado natives decided they could sell the brand on its nostalgia. They found the recipe for Duffy's Root Beer and prepared a batch.

Bonnie Mapelli said the mixture was perfect on their first try.

Today, Duffy's Root Beer is available in 50 restaurants and 54 Albertson's grocery stores. Duffy's also is available at Six Flags Elitch Gardens amusement park, the Buffalo Bill museum on Lookout Mountain and Red Rocks amphitheater.

The root beer is made at Lonetree Brewery on 55th Avenue near I-25.

"Anyone who has made root beer in their basement knows root beer warms up and expands, and bottles explode," Mapelli said. "The (brewery's) vats can handle expansion of all the gases and this kind of thing."

Duffy's hired the microbrewery to make one batch of root beer every week. A batch includes 350 cases (1,400 six packs) or 50 kegs. The six packs cost about $4.60.

Duffy's started distributing the root beer in 1996. Later that year, the root beer won a taste test in Boulder, beating national brands A&W, Barq's, and smaller brands such as Stewart's.

Mapelli said Duffy's does little advertising because it is too expensive. The company, which doesn't have a Web site, relies on the root beer's two distributors to spread the word about the product.

"We have root beer float tastings for the sales force, so they know what they're talking about when they go to the retailers."

According to trade magazine Beverage Digest, Americans consumed 9.93 billion cases of carbonated beverages in 1999. Root beer makes up a small part of those sales, with Barq's the only root beer brand among the top 10 beverages in 1999. Coca-Cola Classic was the top carbonated beverage brand, with sales of 2.02 billion cases, or more than 20 percent of the market.

Mapelli said she and her husband had worked in the beverage industry for 30 years before they bought Duffy's.

"You'd better have a little bit of knowledge of the business you want to get into," Mapelli said. "Otherwise, it's like taking a paint brush and saying, 'I'm going to be a painter."'

While she declined to say how much she and her husband paid for the company a decade ago, Mapelli said the couple paid for Duffy's with their own money. The company has no investors and no debt.

Duffy's has no plans to launch new products. For now, Mapelli is happy to try to get the root beer into other retail outlets.

"We want to get it on the shelves and out in the market, and take care of it the way you would a child, and make sure everything is as it should be," she said.

Duffy's Root Beer, (303) 329-3628.

July 23, 2000