Glunz Family History in Chicago
The Louis Glunz story begins in 1879, when Louis Glunz I arrived in
Chicago from his native Wesphalia, Germany. Louis found that Chicago was
a bustling port city struggling to recover from the Great Chicago Fire.
With little more than the clothes he was wearing and dream of starting
his own business, Louis took a job as a deliveryman with Wacker & Birk,
a Chicago brewery owned by prominent civic leader and businessman Charles
H. Wacker. He worked hard, learned all he could about the brewery business
and saved his wages to begin his own company.
Louis became a favorite of the Wackers. They showed their gratitude
in the form of a business loan. In 1888, Louis set up shop as a wine, beer
and spirits merchant at Wells and Division streets where his grandchildren
and great grandchildren continue to do business today.
Shortly after Louis I opened his beer and wine business, he acquired
a tavern next door and sold beer and sandwiches. Meanwhile, his retail
business was growing. He was bottling his own beer, wines, cordials and
spirits and becoming a supplier to the wealthy leaders of Chicago industry
on the Gold Coast.
Each day he delivered kegs of beer and baskets of wines and spirits
to the German taverns along Lincoln Avenue. In the basement of the two
stores, he bottled beer for the next day's orders, and bottled, corked
and labeled wines to be laid down in his cellars.
In 1893, his friend, Charlie Wacker, who was then a director of the
World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, was instrumental in making Louis
a bottler of Schlitz beer for the Exposition.
Married Elizabeth Mitterbacher, Louis and Elizabeth had three boys and
three girls who would all play roles in the Glunz story: Louis II, Bertha,
Joe, Edwin, Cecelia, and Anna. A tradition was established in the Louis
Glunz family that was united each succeeding generation - by the age of
5 or 6; each of Louis' children was learning the business as he had - from
the bottom up.
Armed with the Schlitz distributorship, and its reputation for fine
beer, wines and spirits, the business expanded and the family continued
to prosper. But then came Prohibition. Sacramental wines and medicinal
products had become the mainstay of the business when Louis Glunz I died
in 1931. He had guided the family and business most of the way through
the less prosperous days of Prohibition. Now Louis II was in charge.
Louis II and his wife, Clare Stubing, raised five children: Louis III,
Patricia, John, Barbara and Joseph. At midnight on the day of the repeal
of prohibition in 1933, Clare and Louis II went to the railway yard for
the first delivery of beer barrels. It was bedlam at the station and chaos
later on Wells Street as the sidewalk was stacked high with new barrels
ready to be lowered into the long empty cellars under the Glunz store.
The bottling business began again. The business began focusing on wholesaling
and, in particular, on beer distribution. The company continued to bottle
non-pasteurized draft Schlitz in half gallon bottles at a new facility
at Hill and Franklin streets until World War II beer rationing began in
1942.
In 1942 the business continued to do well, despite the rationing of
beer during World War II. After the War, Schlitz capitalized on its popularity
with troops overseas and led the way into mass marketing of beer. Louis
Glunz Inc., with its long relationship with Schlitz, became a prominent
distributor of Schlitz on the North Side of Chicago.
Meanwhile, the third generation of the Glunz family pursued their educations
while continuing to work with the business with their parents. The fourth
generation family members who worked in the business to subsidize their
college tuitions have carried on this tradition.
Louis III started a chemical business Regis Chemical Co. in a warehouse
the family owned across the street from the Wells St. store. Regis Chemical
Co. continues to operate in Morton Grove, Illinois. In 1960, Louis III
married Jean Madden and they became the parents of six children. And today
Louis and several of his family run the business.
After the second brother, John graduated from Loras College in Dubuque,
Iowa, in 1957; he married Patricia Haskins and began their family of seven
children. John concentrated on the beer business; today John is president
of Louis Glunz Beer Inc.'s.
Meanwhile, the third brother, Joseph, after attending John Carroll University
in Cleveland, transformed his father's wine collection into one of the
finest wine distributorships in the United States. Today, president of
Glunz Wines, Joseph married Helen Touhy and they had 10 children.
In 1992 the three brothers who had 23 children decided to split the
company into three separate companies with each brother heading up their
individual company.
Louis Glunz Beer Inc. which is owned by Pat & John are proud to
have 5 of their seven children involved.
The fourth and fifth generations of the Glunz family are in much the
same situation as young Louis I. The members of the fourth generation are
learning, as did their parents and grandparents, about a business their
great grandfather couldn't have dreamed of: one with a territory that spans
much of the country; one that went from hand basket and a horse-drawn cart
to 11 trucks that distribute beer from 75 breweries.
One hundred and twelve years after Louis Glunz I got off a train in
Chicago with nothing but new frontiers before him, his legacy, Louis Glunz
Beer, Inc., has passed the test of time. The challenges of the fourth and
succeeding generations are not unlike those he faced. But with the family's
enterprise and expertise, they are even better prepared to meet the challenges
of the next 100 years.
