Gum tech at (on) Goose Island

By Rachelle Bowden in Food on Sep 16, 2005 7:50PM

So when Chicagoist learns that the Wrigley people have opened a Goose Island lab, the mind reels. Beer-flavored gum? Drunken scientists trying to make a candy that masks the booze on your breath? An anti-hangover mint? That would be awesome.

Chicagoist, however, has to learn to read the paper a little more closely.

Turns out that Goose Island is an actual island as well as one of the better micro-breweries in the country. (But let’s pause for a second for a Lakefront Brewery shout-out. It’s in Milwaukee, and its brewery tour rocked Chicagoist’s world a few years ago.)

Wrigley Co. has just christened a facility on the island, which is in the Chicago River near North and Clybourn. There’s a 153,000-square-foot main building where the Wrigley folks – food scientists, engineers, chemists, market researchers, et al. – will devise new gums, candies, and packaging to entice the sweet teeth of the world.
There’s also a 40,000-square-foot plant, which is connected to the main building via a breezeway. (No, we don’t know what a breezeway is, either.) But this plant is where they can test smaller batches of product and/or flavors. Before they’d have to shut down an entire line of production.

The upshot of this whole shebang is that Wrigley is all sorts of proud of its new digs because of the opportunity for product innovation, consumer testing, and the fact that the building itself is way cool for its workers. They can access their wireless laptops and phones anywhere in the building, and they can move their cubicles and office equipment to meet “the needs of the day.” Chicagoist imagines they’ll be making forts while popping innovatively-flavored bubbles.

And while all of this is nice and good and interesting, Chicagoist is still focused on the nexus of beer and chewing gum. This is an area that should receive study in the new complex. We suggest a cinnamon lager breath strip.

Thanks, Roland!