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Making soda is a way of life for the Petix brothers.

One sip of College Club Beverage’s vibrant red Fruit Punch soda and I’m whisked back to the kitchen in my grandfather’s home in Rochester’s Maplewood neighborhood. I remember standing by the back door and looking at the other colorful flavors in the crate of one-quart refillable glass bottles — the painted labels had a vintage look even then.

Tasting the flavors of the past “brings back good memories,” agrees Lou Petix, who co-owns the 95-year-old Rochester-based soda bottling operation with his brother Joe. And the Petix brothers have plenty of good memories themselves.

As the third generation of the Petix family to make soda, the business is more of a lifestyle than a job for the brothers. Grandfather Luigi Petix started the business in 1922 next door to his Grape St. home, where the warehouse still stands today. After World War II, the Petix brothers’ father and uncle took over, and not long after that Lou and Joe were pitching in.

“I started coming over here when I was eight years old,” Lou says. “They called me ‘the shadow’ because I always followed my father around.” Lou calculated exactly how many steps he needed to stay behind as he followed his father from the 4000 gallon tank of pure cane syrup, to the 150 gallon vats of flavoring, natural fruit acids and syrup that combine with carbonated water to make the sodas, and on to the bottle filling and washing equipment housed in the College Club warehouse.

Back then, there were 10-12 local soda bottlers, and none of them were big name operations, Lou says. Each bottler made soda for a different ethnic palette, and there was more of a sense of camaraderie than competition in the local industry, he explains. “It was a community that did this. We weren’t out for each other’s throats,” he says.

Today, College Club is the last business standing among those friendly competitors. The labels on the refillable bottles in the warehouse are a roll call of bygone local beverage purveyors including New Crown Beverages, Pop Shoppe, American Club, and Fiz Beverages.

What kept College Club afloat when their fellow bottlers folded? “Well, we can’t sing or dance,” Lou says. Returning to the family business after college, Lou says “it wasn’t like work. It was ‘this is what we do.’ I never really thought about doing anything else.”

Everything Old is New Again

“Nobody could make sodas like we do,” Lou says. “We use recipes from 50 years ago. Nobody can duplicate them.”

But today, what was once local pop is being reborn as a craft soda. The hipster delight in all things retro, combined with the “shop local” mantra of the locavore movement has bubbled up into new opportunities for College Club. Beginning a nostalgic soda line was the logical next step in the company’s story.

Capitalizing on favorite flavors of the Upstate New York region, College began production on Syracuse Orange Soda, ROC City Root Beer, and Buffalo Birch Beer in 2014 and has been going strong ever since. These sodas are bottled in smaller 12 oz sizes with retro Fiz Pop labels. (The brothers bought the name rights to Fiz Beverages when the bottler shut down a few years ago.)

Fiz’s zesty Jamaican Stone Ginger Beer is the favorite flavor from this line. Local Rochester cocktail bars all stock it and the product has even made its way downstate into the boroughs of New York City.

Reaching back to its ethnic roots, College Club also produces a line of Italian specialty sodas under the Primo name. Gassosa, a natural lemon soda popular in Southern Italy, which has long been one of the company’s most popular flavors, leads the Primo flavor roster.

Of the old guard College Club flavors, Ginger Ale and Gassosa are most popular. The Ginger Ale recipe is one the Petix brothers’ grandfather took special pride in. College Club also produces a seasonal Golden Ginger Ale in the winter that’s a little sweeter and has more heat than their standard Ginger Ale. Club Soda and Lemon Seltzer are also popular flavors, Lou says. “Our Club Soda is salt free — normally Club Soda has salt.” And all of the College Club sodas are sweetened with 100 percent pure cane sugar — no high fructose corn syrup.

This will likely be the last generation of the Petix family to bottle soda, Lou says. “This is hard work. You don’t get out as much as you put in.” And there’s no longer a grandmother living next door, bringing over fresh-cooked meals during the work day.

But for now, the Petix brothers are still bottling up memories and working on new flavors at their warehouse and drive-thru beverage center on Grape Street.