By Anthony Salamone, Dan Sheehan and Jacqueline Palochko

The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)

Goodbye, A-Treat. Birthday parties and barbecues, field trips and family picnics won't be the same without you.

Those are the events where generations of Lehigh Valley residents learned to love the many varieties of soda produced in A-Treat's east Allentown factory: the cola and cream soda, the birch beer and ginger ale, the grapefruit and black cherry and sarsaparilla and Big Blue -- the blue raspberry variety that was colored like nothing in nature but was catnip to sweet-toothed kids.

A-Treat Bottling Co. closed Friday, putting about 40 people out of work and ending a soda-making tradition that began in 1918 when the Egizio brothers, John and Jack, started the business in the garage of their Allentown home.

The company opened its current plant at 2001 Union Blvd. in 1932, and workers churned out a discount beverage brand that may never have approached the status of Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, but found its way into local hearts in a way those corporate behemoths never could.

On Friday, the plant was dark and empty.

Two men familiar with A-Treat confirmed the closing. Eric White, a spokesman for Redner's Markets Inc. in Reading, said the company was notified of A-Treat's closing Friday afternoon via telephone.

"We've had a good relationship with [A-Treat] over the years, so we've been getting our product," White said. "But today is the last day. What we have on the shelves is all we have left."

He also said A-Treat's product distribution had been a "little shaky."

Joe Brake, president and general manager of Coca-Cola Bottling Cos. of the Lehigh Valley, said he heard from customers and employees that the 97-year-old business had closed. Despite A-Treat's being a competitor, Brake said many people praised the product.

"It's really sad," Brake said. "It was a nice family institution for 97 years."

A-Treat officials could not be reached for comment. Multiple efforts to reach Vice President Tom Garvey were unsuccessful; telephone numbers for Garvey were disconnected.

Rumors of A-Treat's closure had been swirling since at least November, when A-Treat decided to stop dealing with retail giant Walmart and its demands that A-Treat resupply store shelves every day, Garvey said at the time.

A-Treat laid off two employees in the move, lowering its total employment to 40. Garvey said the company planned to stick with its model of supplying beer distributors, mom-and-pop stores and independent grocers, as well as bottling other companies' beverages.

"We are running our production lines," Garvey said in November. "People will still be able to enjoy our beverages."

In 2013, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined A-Treat $130,000 for health and safety violations on its manufacturing floor.

Dennis Grube, a programmer with Biometric Services in Bethlehem, built a website for A-Treat and helped develop its Internet sales. Grube said A-Treat was reluctant to pursue online sales, but at its peak, the company sold about a couple dozen cases a month online, he said. The online sales site has been closed since at least Monday.

In the fall, after hearing rumors of A-Treat's troubles, Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. officials visited the company.

"They said they were fine," LVEDC CEO and President Don Cunningham recalled.

Even so, Cunningham said he's not entirely surprised to hear A-Treat is closed. Soda sales have been in decline for a decade, he noted. Today, consumers are more apt to drink flavored water, flavored teas and sports drinks. Big soda companies such as Coca-Cola have helped to maintain profits by diversifying into those products.

"It's a classic example of a changing consumer market," he said. "It's a shame for the reason that it is an iconic brand that many in the Valley grew up with."

U.S. sales volume of carbonated soft drinks fell 3 percent in 2013, according to a report last year from Beverage Digest, an industry publication. That compares with a 1.2 percent decline in 2012, and brings total soda consumption to the lowest level since 1995.

It's not a loss on the scale of Bethlehem Steel or Hess's or any of the other iconic Valley businesses that have preceded A-Treat on the conveyor belt to obsolescence. But it's a blow to everyone's sense of nostalgia and a rare bit of bad news for Allentown, a city that has been gleefully embracing economic revival for a couple of years.

Betsy Wagner, who was outside the Giant supermarket on Union Boulevard in Bethlehem on Friday, recalled a time she bought a case of flat A-Treat birch beer. The Bethlehem woman wrote a letter to the company, and within a week, an A-Treat employee showed up with replacement soda.

"It's very sad to hear that that label is going off the shelves," Wagner said.

The A-Treat brand typically cost less than its bigger competitors. A 2-liter bottle in Giant sells for $1.19, while Pepsi, A&W and Canada Dry are each $1.69.

Guy Hinkel, a sales clerk at East Side Beverage on Airport Road in Allentown, said he called A-Treat near the end of summer to replenish the inventory, but nobody from A-Treat called back.

"We were wondering why we weren't getting [orders]," Hinkle said.

He said East Side typically got 100 cases of soda per order, and birch beer and cola were the most popular brands they sold.

Social media reaction was swift and nearly hysterical: "Nooo black cherry is my fav it can't b," wrote someone named OnlyOne MissUnforgettable on a Facebook page called "You're probably from Allentown if ..."

Late Friday, a Facebook page had been created to save the brand: Lets Keep A-Treat Soda's Flowin.

Reporter Sam Kennedy contributed to this story.

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