Josh Lintereur

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

RANDOM LAKE - Before bringing his family’s defunct, Wisconsin-made soda back to life, John Rassel first wanted to see if there was still demand for what was once a ubiquitous Midwest soda brand.



So far, the answer has been as emphatic as the soda’s name – Jolly Good.

Late last year, the fifth-generation Krier Foods plant in Random Lake began producing Jolly Good soda for the first time in nearly a decade and quietly placed it in a handful of small, eastern Wisconsin gas stations and retailers.

Since then, despite almost no advertising, people have been driving hours to load up on a product that had vanished from store shelves, and the company’s social media accounts have been flooded by commenters giddy over the prospect of the brand’s return.

“Everyone is happy to see it,” said Rassel, who took over the family business in December and now serves as president and sole owner. “Now, we’ve got to get it out there.”

The initial test run consisted of 22,000 cases of what were historically the most popular Jolly Good flavors — cream, cherry, grape, orange and sour pow’r — recreated from the original recipes and sold in a 12-ounce can.

So far, Jolly Good is only available near Random Lake at the Burmesch Variety Store, Cedar Valley Cheese, Trip-Par Qwik Stop and Belgium Hardware, with consumers able to mix and match different flavors within each case.

The company has a long way to go before bringing the soda back to its heyday, when it was common on store shelves throughout the Midwest.

For now, Rassel is content to slowly build distribution at independently owned convenience stores and other retail channels with low barriers to entry. He also hopes to begin selling directly to consumers online.

“Distribution is the hard part,” Rassel said. “A lot of people who aren’t in our industry don’t understand that you can’t just walk into a grocery store and say, “Hey, I got this great product and demand for it. Let me sell it here.’”

RELATED STORY:Random Lake tap-handle maker largest in U.S.

RELATED STORY:Sheboygan company to shake up drink cans - with plastic

Reviving Jolly Good marks the latest evolutionary step for Krier Foods, which opened as a vegetable canning facility in 1913 and was canning fruit drinks by the 1960s when it became one of the first drink processors in the U.S. to begin canning Coca-Cola.

Krier launched its own line of soda in the early 1970s, using the Jolly Good name, and eventually built a standalone beverage processing plant after it began blending and packaging soft drinks on a contract basis for other U.S. brands.

The company, which today employs about 65 people, sold its vegetable processing business in the 1980s and today remains focused on contract soft drink production.

At its peak in the early 1990s, Jolly Good was sold throughout Wisconsin, with distribution stretching into portions of Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. Part of the appeal was variety, with the company at one point selling about 50 different flavors of Jolly Good soda.

However, the brand went into decline by the late 1990s, with Coke and Pepsi coming to dominate the market. The company finally pulled the plug in 2007.

“It was just tough to compete,” Rassel said. “Getting space on store shelves was getting tougher and tougher and our lines were filling up with so much contract packing that you had a steady decline in Jolly Good sales but you had an increase in contracting packing.”

But with the rise in craft beer and local foods and a revival of retro brands, including Schlitz beer, the Jolly Good name kept coming up in conversations Rassel had with his late uncle, Bruce Krier, who ran the business before dying of cancer in 2013.

Finally, Rassel received a phone call from someone looking to buy the brand, which convinced him it was time to act.

Two years ago, the company mixed up a small batch of sour pow’r soda and Rassel convinced area bartenders to mix up sour old-fashioneds with it while leaving the Jolly Good cans visible on the bar.

“Customers were like, “Where the heck did that come from?’ We had to convince some people that it wasn’t old,” he said.

More flavors followed and were handed out at community picnics before being quietly placed on store shelves at area businesses.

Rassel’s pitch to retailers was hardly in line with modern merchandising standards. The best he could offer was to stack cases of soda on the floor with a handwritten sign.

But hey, it was Jolly Good.

“The stores said, ‘Absolutely,’” Rassel recounted.

Of course, feeding off nostalgia is one thing. The challenge going forward will be seeing if the brand has legs with consumers who didn’t grow up with it.

“People remember it from when they were kids in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Now it will be whether they can pass that down to the next generation,” Rassel said.

The buzz is certainly there. The next step is to make it more readily available.

“I’m really literally to a point where I’ve got to get it out there or I’ve got to squash it,” Rassel said. “If we can just sort of light a match and add that match to some kindling wood and turn that kindling wood into a big roaring fire, that’s the way we’re going to approach this.”

Reach USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Reporter Josh Lintereur at 920-453-5147, jlintereur@gannett.com or on Twitter @joshlintereur.

Where to buy Jolly Good