Soda or pop... no matter what you call it, Rochester's family-owned College Club Beverages keeps bottling and selling all kinds of bubbly sweet stuff.
The business opened in 1922.
"This is old school: our returnable and refillable package. The routine for the families on the weekends would be to go to a butcher shop around here and then the bakeries were all on Lyell and Plymouth and the kids would each get to pick out their own pop," Joe Petix said. "Each night a child would pick which flavor to enjoy that night."
Petrix and his brother Louie have worked together since they were 8 and 10 years old. Their grandfather started the company on Rochester’s Grape Street and lived in the house next door.
“It is our heritage and our legacy, we want to keep it going," Louie said. "It's the way we have always done it.”
The beverage center has a drive-thru where you can pull inside the building and they’ll load your cases of pop, beer or water in the vehicle. The Petrix brothers call it “cash and carry”, but they do all the heavy lifting.
The family's craft soda pop FIZ is bottled at the Grape Street location. College Club Beverages was able to expand their beverage business after it purchased the rights to FIZ several years ago.
"We have about 25 flavors altogether between seltzers and sodas and mixers," Louie said. "We got a flavor for every taste. We want to make everybody happy. When you use 100 percent cane sugar, you are eliminating anything such as corn syrup which people really do want to consume."
College Club has a special flavor coming out just in time for Halloween. It's called “Bat's Blood.”
"It will be coming out the first of October and it's on the way from Transylvania," Louie added.
The beverage company has two locations in Rochester: 63 Grape Street and 662 West Ridge Road. It's open Monday through Saturday.