Bob Sutherland

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Cherry Republic founder Bob Sutherland writes memoir “Here All Along”

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In 1989, Bob Sutherland started Cherry Republic selling T-shirts out of the trunk of his beat-up old Toyota Tercel. He’d park the car under the streetlight at Art’s Tavern and spend summer evenings chatting up tourists at the bar then taking them out to the bungeed-down trunk. They’d hand him $15 for a T-shirt, resplendent with Kristin Hurlin’s original cherry tree and the now-iconic phrase, “Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie.” In his new book “Here All Along,” which publishes this month and is available at the store, Sutherland shares deeply personal stories of loss, wayfinding, wildness, adventure, and hard sticky work that built Cherry Republic.

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Nightmare on Ice, Miracle on Ice

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Remembering a near-death experience on frozen Lake Michigan. It was Super Bowl Sunday of 1984, and the carefree 15-year-old girls wanted to find ice caves. Karen Gros and Bobbi Boos, students at the Leelanau School north of Glen Arbor, walked onto frozen Sleeping Bear Bay in search of tunnels and mammoth formations they expected to find on Lake Michigan. The girls suddenly found themselves on a chunk of ice that broke off from the pack and began floating away from the shore. Suddenly, the ice on which they stood began to disintegrate into smaller chunks.

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Leelanau Coffee’s journey from Empire to Glen Arbor

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John Arens reflects on the coffee company—and Glen Arbor mainstay—he and his brother Steve launched 33 years ago. They sold the company early this year to Grand Rapids-based Schuil Coffee Co. Leelanau Coffee opened in 1992 on Lake Street, sharing a 500-square-foot space with another startup called Cherry Republic.

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Cherry Republic installs Glen Arbor’s first electric car chargers

One of the challenges for those embracing the switch to electric cars is finding a place to charge them when out on the road. Cherry Republic is part of the solution. It has installed Red E Electric Vehicle Fast Chargers at its headquarters in the Village Sampler shopping center in Glen Arbor, offering residents and visitors alike a way to charge their vehicles. Cherry Republic owner and CEO Bob Sutherland says he has wanted to install car chargers for several years. A noted environmentalist, he wants to make sure the company is doing its part to mitigate global warming.

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Life, liberty, beaches and pie—for our foreign-born workers, for us all

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July 4 has always been my favorite holiday since I was a young child running around Glen Arbor in the 1970s. I felt such pride being an American. Recently, our chef at the Cherry Public House told me that he saw a border patrol agent driving down M-22. He was miffed that they were patrolling Leelanau—200 miles from a border that happens to be the safest in the world. It is nerve-wracking for our foreign and local workers at Cherry Republic because we are a team and family and we don’t want to be broken up any more than the hard-working families we’ve seen on television torn apart in pools of tears these last six months. Cherry Republic is hosting a refugee family from Central America. The father has taken on the difficult job of stirring our four giant scalding jam and salsa kettles in our Empire plant. Unfortunately, because of the legal wrangling going on between the courts and The White House, our Central American refugees can no longer work. The pot stirrer in Washington shutting down the pot stirrer in Empire.

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Sleeping Bear manhunt, Empire sugar bear, Pop-tart man Bill Post, Twin Flames wedding: Glen Arbor Sun’s top-viewed stories of 2024

Our coverage in 2024 featured crimes, celebrities, cool new businesses, and an homage to the now removed Crystal River culverts. Our top 10 most-read stories included: a manhunt in the National Lakeshore; the search for a black bear that broke into Grocers Daughter Chocolate and devoured a 50-pound bag of sugar; Jerry Seinfeld’s movie “Unfrosted” about Pop-Tart man Bill Post, and the Twin Flames Universe cult’s secretive wedding in Traverse City. Thanks for your readership. We look forward to sharing more stories of Leelanau County events, characters, businesses, and the arts in 2025. Here’s the list of our Top 10 stories by online views in 2024.

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True Gretch cherry salsa

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer held up her book True Gretch and a jar of Cherry Republic’s “True Gretch Cherry Salsa” at the Traverse City Opera House on July 31 after Cherry Republic founder Bob Sutherland interviewed her for the National Writers Series.

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Cherry Republic’s Bob Sutherland takes stage with “True Gretch”

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Governor Gretchen Whitmer will visit the Traverse City Opera House on Wednesday, July 31, to promote her new book, “True Gretch,” as part of the National Writers Series. Michigan’s popular second-term governor has a national profile and co-chairs Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House—a role she also held for President’s Biden’s campaign before he exited the race earlier this month. Cherry Republic founder and president, and Glen Arbor native, Bob Sutherland will guest host the event and interview Whitmer on stage. The Sun chatted with Sutherland about Whitmer—whom he has hosted at Cherry Public House—about his support for progressive candidates and environmental causes, and about the need for businesses to get involved in important issues. “Businesses are one of the few institutions that people still trust,” said Sutherland. In-person tickets to the July 31 are sold out. Click here to purchase a virtual ticket.

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Op-ed: Heritage Trail extension offers positive recreational opportunity

The following op-eds by Bob Sutherland and Julie Zapoli—both Little Traverse Lake residents and Glen Arbor business owners—were written in response to the Sun’s coverage of Little Traverse Lake Association opposition to an expansion of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail, a portion of which would run near the north shore of the lake. Sutherland writes, “It is unfortunate that we are going to lose more trees in the development of this trail, but in the big picture, this four-mile extension completes an infinitely positive recreational trail and a key transportation alternative for residents and vacationers in Leelanau County. The recent study that opposition used to stir up doubt in this final section should not take away from the decade of environmentally sensitive planning the National Park Service, Michigan Department of Transportation, Leelanau County Road Commission, and Army Corp of Engineers executed to meet all the federal wetlands, dune and endangered species regulations.”

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Cherry Republic supports local farmers during National Cherry Month

In a significant move to bolster the agricultural community, Cherry Republic announced that during National Cherry Month in February, 2 percent of all sales from its six stores and online will be donated to the Farm Stress Program, supporting the mental health and wellbeing of Michigan farmers. “This February, every purchase at Cherry Republic is not just a tribute to the iconic Michigan cherry, but also a direct support to the heart and soul of our agricultural community — our farmers,” said Sara Harding, vice president of Marketing and Impact at Cherry Republic. The donation to the Farm Stress Program is a cornerstone of Cherry Republic’s campaign to spotlight the importance of mental health among farmers. The program, with MSU Extension, provides free resources including teletherapy, educational presentations, farm financial analysis, and business management strategies, among others.

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