1945- Grandpa Ollie was a bread truck driver in good old GC. He knew of a tavern owner who wanted to retire and struck a deal. A personal load from another local business man and a legacy was born.
Granite City Steel was building blast furnaces, and the local labors would find their way to Roderick’s Tavern at lunch time to eat their brown bag lunch and for a “shot and a beer”.
One of the labors who grew friendly with Grandpa made an, off the cuff comment, “Ollie, we are tired of eating our lunchmeat sandwiches” or at least something to that affect was all it took. Ollie procured a green sea turtle and made what became locally famous Turtle Mulligan. Things grew from there.
Fast forward a whole lot of years to 1985, Grandma and Grandpa had retired and Jerry (Dad) wanted to make it on his own. He wanted something bigger with more room to grow a catering business. Through a local salesman he found that Bill Burns, another local restaurateur was wanting to retire, and his place seemed to be a good fit.
Jerry took over what was formerly Bill Burns Cafeteria January 1986 and Jerry’s Cafeteria & Catering was born.
We have had some ups and downs over that last 30+ years and Jerry was able to retire in 2017.
