Shasta (soft drink) produced its first soft drink, a ginger ale. Until the 1950s, the company's products were mainly mixers for alcoholic drinks: mineral water, club soda, and ginger ale. Shasta introduced new marketing strategies in the 1950s, which became industry standards: the packaging of soft drinks in cans, the introduction of low calorie soft drinks, and the distribution of cans and bottles directly to grocers through wholesale channels. By 1960, Shasta was a well-known brand in the western United States. During the 1960s, under the ownership of Luke Wienecke, Shasta was sold to Consolidated Foods (later known as Sara Lee) and was
Steak and Ale of Steak and Ale and Jolly Ox (the name Steak and Ale used in markets that did not allow a reference to liquor in a restaurant name). In 1982, Pillsbury spun off the company and Bennigan's into the independent S&A Restaurant Corp. Steak and Ale grew as one of the first chain dinner houses to its height in the late 1980s with 280 locations, before competition that the brand helped inspire eroded its market presence. In 1988, Metromedia purchased the company. In 1993, the company was merged with the Metromedia Steak Houses chains Bonanza and Ponderosa, and all three chains