Waukegan company, Glen Rock Beverages, working to revitalize soft drinks familiar to many in Lake County

Chicago Tribune

19 hours ago

As Keith Michalek strives to revive a Waukegan business — Glen Rock Beverages — which ceased operations nearly 35 years ago by taking his trailer equipped with a 12-flavor pop dispenser to events in Lake County, he is getting a lot of people excited and nostalgic.
'It's exactly the same pop,' Waukegan native and one-time Lake County Reorder Mary Ellen Vanderventer said. 'It tastes exactly the same. It's a trip down memory lane.'
'We'd return a bottle, get five cents, and get candy or another pop,' Mayor Sam Cunningham said, evoking a childhood memory. 'He's rebuilding a business here, and it's exciting for the community.'
'We'd go there once a week when I was growing up,' Amanda Milewski, now an administrator for Waukegan Community Unit School District 6, said. 'It was our weekly field trip. We got to pick out our favorite flavors. We had to have a cream soda for our father.'
'I have such fun memories of going there to pick out our pop,' Mary Beth Bretzlauf, a lifelong Waukegan resident, said. 'If only I could send a T-shirt to my siblings,' she added, getting more excited when she learned that Michalek sells the apparel too.
'It was the best cream soda you could find anywhere,' former Waukegan Township Supervisor Patricia Jones said.
'Sometimes you could go and they were actually bottling,' Ray Vuckovich, another lifelong Waukegan resident, said. 'It's a great blast from the past, and now I think it's good for the next generation.'
Michalek continues to make arrangements to mix, bottle, and sell a variety of Glen Rock pop flavors with retail and restaurant customers throughout Lake County, already committed to selling or serving the beverage in their establishments.
An Antioch resident and the owner of Graphic Dimensions Design Group, which designs exhibits for the convention industry, Michalek said he remembers when Glen Rock pop was sold at retailers throughout Lake County and beyond. He recollects how much he enjoyed drinking it.
'As soon as I can remember anything, Glen Rock was there,' Michalek said. 'I was able to buy some old Glen Rock seven-ounce bottles (online) to use as decorations at home.'
Starting to put the return of Glen Rock to Waukegan and Lake County in motion in February, Michalek said his goal is to distribute from Waukegan. He is near securing space in the city. He needs to sell enough — it could take approximately two years — to make the bottles returnable.
'When we have 25,000 returnable bottles in a Waukegan storage facility, Glen Rock will be back,' he said.
Along with his boyhood memories of walking through his neighborhood to the Glen Rock facility, Cunningham said the return of a business after 35 years shows community resilience. It will be a boost to the city not only for those who once enjoyed the drink, but the younger generation too.
'This is a feel-good moment for everyone who grew up in the era of Glen Rock beverages,' Cunningham said. 'It was a staple here. He is rebuilding the brand. It will be good for him and the entire community.'
Potential stumbling blocks and expenses melted away quickly for Michalek in February as he decided he wanted to reestablish Glen Rock beverages not as current soft drink companies are doing business, but make the beverage exactly as it was originally.
Making wine and beer at home for friends and family, Michalek said he also makes soft drinks so he had an idea of what he was going to do. More problematic was the use of the name Glen Rock.
'I did a search to see if it was trademarked,' Michalek said. 'It wasn't, so I got the trademark. I did a search for the corporation and the name. There was nothing there, so I incorporated my company, Glen Rock Beverages, Inc.'
Legally able to operate, Michalek said he reached out to the last owner of Glen Rock, who now lives in Winthrop Harbor. From him, he got the name of the business that once mixed the ingredients into soft drinks
.
'He still had all the formulas and recipes from the 1970s, with cane sugar, no corn syrup,' Michalek said, 'I found a bottler in Wisconsin. He fills the bottles, carbonates the pop, and caps it.
Along with taking his Glen Rock trailer to farmers markets and other events in the area — including Waukegan's National Night Out and touch a truck event last Friday — Michalek is finding retail customers. So far, he has agreements with 18 retailers or restaurants in Waukegan and other parts of Lake County.
Vanderventer said Glen Rock is already on a map of historical places in one of the permanent exhibits at the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie, which opened in May.
'It's number 52 on the map,' she said. 'Everyone you talk to grew up with the pop. You took the bottles back and got a refund. Oh my God, it was my favorite drink.'
Though he is too young to remember drinking Glen Rock as a boy, Jeremiah Johnson, one of the owners of Quonset Pizza in Waukegan and a Waukegan Park District commissioner, said Michalek and his trailer were invited to a recent celebration there.
'I'm happy to reintroduce an old flavor to the community I knew everyone was missing,' Johnson said.