For Old Town small business week, each day this week we will be honoring a small business that has been in the neighborhood for over 15 years. Today we feature House of Glunz, operating in Old Town since 1888, including throughout Prohibition!

1) Tell us about House of Glunz. What led you to open it? What makes it unique? 

The House of Glunz was opened in 1888 by my great grandfather.  He had recently immigrated to Chicago from Germany and, fortunately for me, this is where most Germans settled in Chicago.

2) What are some lessons and rewarding moments you’ve experienced from running your small business?

By keeping faith with my great Grandfather’s original model of quality products and exceptional customer experience we have been able to distinguish ourselves from the myriad of competitors.  It’s always gratifying when customers come back and say the wine we picked was perfect with the dinner or the whiskey they had never tried before is now their favorite.  We are very passionate the products we represent and the people who are making them and that passion comes through to our customers.

3) What is something people might not realize about your business?

In 1920 we closed the Glunz Tavern for the Prohibition.  The shop never closed because we sold medicinal alcohol and sacramental wine to the Catholic Church.  In 2012 we restored and reopened the Glunz Tavern (it’s actually a restaurant).  The Glunz Tavern looks just like it did in 1900!

 

4) What brought you to Old Town? What led you to stay?

We started in Old Town because immigrants tended to cluster ethnically.  Over the years Old Town has changed quite a bit but it has always been a vibrant neighborhood retaining clues of the many families and businesses that came before.  We stayed in Old Town because it has continued to be an exciting living neighborhood where the past is a home with the promising future.

5) Describe Old Town when you first opened and how it has changed. 

When we first opened our doors, the city was still being rebuilt after the fire.  The neighborhood was bustling with industry.  We were bottling wines & spirits in our cellar and distributing all over the city by horse-drawn delivery truck.  The Oscar Meyer family lived above the meat packing plant just north of us and the Dr Scholl’s factory was thriving where Cobbler’s Square is today.  The apartments above the retail shops on Wells were filled with recent immigrant laborers.  What is Old Town today was a microcosm of the whole city.  People were ambitiously working to build their dreams and with it they were rebuilding the entire city.

6) Is there anything else you would like to share about you or your business?

A huge part of our business is gifts.  We have been in the catalog business since the 1940s.  We ship gifts all over the country let alone all over Chicago.  We have corporate and private clients that have been using us for decades and some for generations.  In the last few years we have built a very successful state-of-the-art website so people all over the United States have been able to discover our inventory of rare and wonderful wines and spirits.