Starting with a small gourmet coffee shop in Long Grove that she and her then-husband bought as a hobby — and with no expectation of making money — Gloria Jean Kvetko went on to expand the chain first locally and then nationally, even before Starbucks became the coffee juggernaut that it is.
“Gloria was a very determined person who knew what the customer liked, and she made sure the store provided it,” said Roger Badesch, the chain’s advertising and marketing director for four years.
Kvetko, 82, died of complications from pneumonia June 14 at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, said her son, Tom Jaworski. She had been a Long Grove resident since 1985.
Born Gloria Jean Lehnert in Chicago, Kvetko grew up in the Northwest Side Irving Park neighborhood, in a house on North Bernard Street. She attended Roosevelt High School and Wright Junior College before marrying her first husband in 1962 when she was 21 and settling in Prospect Heights.
Though home raising a family, Kvetko showed plenty of entrepreneurial moxie, and she earned extra money for her family by babysitting, bookkeeping, working as a toy demonstrator and even selling Avon makeup. She eventually earned her beautician’s license, and with her children older, she began working at a Wheeling beauty shop.
With the beauty shop set to be sold, Kvetko decided to buy it from the owners and began running Gloria’s Studio One, her son said.
Several years later, Kvetko and her then-husband, who was a homebuilder, chose to shift gears and buy and overhaul a small Long Grove boutique coffee store.“It was a hobby thing, where they thought that they could do together, with her design expertise and his construction knowledge,” Jaworski said.
Named Gloria Jean’s Coffee Bean, the store quickly found its sweet spot after the Kvetkos shifted its focus to selling flavored coffee beans and offering a wide selection.
“When I was growing up, everyone in my family had a different taste in coffee,” Kvetko told the Tribune in 1991. “My mother liked a little cream and no sugar. My father had to have sugar and a lot of cream. My grandmother insisted on half and half in her coffee. I learned that having coffee is a simple process, but the way everyone likes it is not so simple. There’s just no right or wrong when it comes to drinking coffee.”
Soon after reorganizing and rebranding the Long Grove store, the couple were asked to open a store in the Northbrook Court shopping mall in Northbrook and at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.
More expansions followed, and Kvetko eventually decided to exit her salon business.
“It started to consume them,” Jaworski said. “So they sold the beauty shop and Ed got out of construction.”
In 1986, the company began franchising locations, and by 1993, the chain had grown to more than 220 stores nationwide.
Some of the keys to Kvetko’s success were design and packaging, her son said.
“She did all the design, and she was a sucker for good packaging,” Jaworski said. “Her feeling was, if you present it right, it sells.”
Badesch, later a newsman for WGN-AM, recalled Kvetko as the first retailer to sell flavored coffee.
“She was in a mall, and you have to compete with other businesses, so she knew that the smell of flavors would grab people and pull them in,” Badesch said. “She started that and she also was the first to come up with half (decaffeinated) and half regular coffee, because a lot of people wanted something stronger than decaf. Everyone has followed suit. She knew how to serve the customer.”
Kvetko also touted the family feel of her company in a 1991 interview with the Tribune.
“I’ve always been proud of my role as a mother and a housewife,” she told the Tribune. “The family has always come first. But this company is like an extension of my family. There’s a real family feel here, and I think that’s one of the big reasons we’ve been so successful.”
In 1993, Kvetko and her husband sold the chain to a Colorado-based firm, Brothers Gourmet. Today, the chain is known as Gloria Jean’s Coffees and has about 600 locations around the globe. It’s owned by Australian franchisor Retail Food Group.
After selling the business, Kvetko took a little time off before starting a new fast-food, carryout restaurant venture called Harvest of the Greens, designed for shopping malls and food courts. Featuring healthy food, the eatery opened first in the food court at Gurnee Mills Mall in Gurnee.
“I knew that when I went to malls, I couldn’t get the food I wanted at most food courts,” Kvetko told the Tribune in 1997. “There simply wasn’t a choice.”
Kvetko opened other locations at the Louis Joliet Mall in Joliet and at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora. However, she shut down Harvest of the Greens in 1999 after developing breast cancer.
After successfully fighting breast cancer, Kvetko enjoyed traveling the world with family, friends and with a cruise group, her son said. She also was a huge fan of numerology, according to a close friend and neighbor, Sheri Meketa.
“She was such a quick wit,” Meketa said. “She was so smart. She was really good with humor and comebacks. And she would have a beautiful Christmas party every year. She was just so full of life, and her brain was working all the time on the next idea.”
Two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to her son, Kvetko is survived by another son, John; a sister, Gladys; two grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
A visitation will take place from 3:30 to 7 p.m. Friday at Glueckert Funeral Home, 1520 N. Arlington Heights Road, Arlington Heights. A memorial service will take place at 7 p.m. at the funeral home.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.