The House of Glunz

Chicago has many iconic and historic family and brand names, from Wrigley to Malnati to Wacker to Mayer to Glunz. The Glunz story began in 1879 when Louis Glunz emigrated from Paderborn, Germany, to the east coast of the U.S. He struggled to make a go of it, and a former neighbor in Germany wired that he should join him in Chicago, which he described as a boom town following the Great Chicago Fire. That neighbor was Oscar Mayer (yes, that one). Glunz got a job at a brewery owned by Charles Wacker (yes, that one). It was Wacker who set up Louis as Chicago’s first distributor of Schlitz beer in 1888. Today, the president of Louis Glunz Beer, Inc., is Jerry Glunz, the great-grandson of Louis. He tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that the Glunz empire has expanded and now includes a wine distribution company, a vineyard in California, the House of Glunz, still in the original location at Division and Wells, which deals in fine wines and liquor, the Glunz Tavern next door, which reopened recently after being closed since Prohibition, and a chemical company, Regis Technologies. Five generations have worked or are working in the Glunz business, and a sixth is on the way.