Tell Us Your BOOST! Stories
We would love to hear from you.
Send photos that go with the stories, if available
You can send them to our address:
The BOOST! Company
P.O. Box 204
Riverside, New Jersey 08075
Or email them to us at: stories@takaboost.com
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My family has been drinking Boost! since the early sixties in Burlington Twp. We could even purchase it at the shore when we went on vacation to Barnegat Light. It has always been part of our childhood and being part of life in Central NJ. Now that I've grown up and moved away to Central FL, I have cravings for a tall, cold glass of Boost!, especially after mowing the lawn on a hot day. Boost! boosts your spirits and and takes thirst away! Thanks for boosting my life!
Eric Caulfield in Melbourne Florida. 10/07
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I'm from Delaware with cousins in Florence NJ and have been enjoying Takeaboost since I was a child (and I am 54). My cousin Cookie would come to visit with her Uncle Spader and they always brought a bottle of Boost!. I love it and always get bottles of it to take back home when I visit Florence
Thank you for your great product.
Jody Schulte 2/08
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My Dad's birthday is coming up and he will be 93 . Very active and no health problems. He spends winter in Florida and Summer in Pennsauken, NJ . He has been drinking Tak-Aboost for as long as we can remember. We are going to Florida for a big 93rd Birthday party for him. He has requested we bring him his favorite drink.... Tak-Aboost. Mom is 91 and also enjoys a BOOST!
Thank you for a great drink . Glen and Cory 03/08
| I grew up in South Jersey and I've been drinking BOOST! since I learned how to hold a cup. Now I go to college in Dover, DE and drive up to Jersey just to buy BOOST! Absolutely amazing!
-Heather 03/08
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From The News & Observer Raleigh NC
THE TASTES WE LONG FOR
What foods do you long for from home, stuff in your suitcase or beg visiting relatives to bring?
SAY WHAT?
The honor of craving a food we had never heard of belongs to Sue Cunningham of Raleigh.
Cunningham, who grew up in southern New Jersey, outside of Philadelphia, misses Takaboost, a brown drink syrup that is mixed with water to create a sweet drink that tastes like flat soda. Cunningham says the drink was ubiquitous in her community; everyone served Takaboost at card parties and picnics. She replenishes her supply with the help of friends who often return to New Jersey but that doesn’t mean she is generous with the supply she has.
Cunningham limits her 17 year-old son and 15 year-old daughter to one glass each when she makes some. She warns them when their friends come over to the house: “Don’t be letting your friends drink all my Boost!”
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I was in FOB Danger, Tikrit Iraq 2004-2005
I called and ordered a case and your company was so nice and helpful. The case arrived (rather quickly)
and I tore into it like a 5yr old at christmas. That first cup of Boost! was the greatest thing I have ever tasted.
With temperatures reaching 126+, that was, and still is, the best gift I have ever received!
Thank you
Sgt Ron Manka
A co 250th SIG BN
Delran NJ 05/08
| "I can remember going to Faunce's where "Boost!" was invented and hanging out after football/basketball games or on Friday and Saturday nights. You would order a Boost! and it would come with a real glass with a straw and a pretzel hanging from the straw. Boy...I think that's still one of my favorite drinks."
Quote in the Riverside Positive Press from Paul Richardson of Surfside Beach South Carolina.
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I was happy to stumble across your website, and found it very user-friendly and easy to navigate. When I was little, I always remember going to my Aunt Lydia's house in Delran and having a ice cold glass of Boost! (we called it Drink Atoast then.) I absolutely loved the stuff and probably drank more of her supply than her own kids did! To this day whenever I taste that drink I am reminded of all the great times spent at my Aunt's house. When I went away to college my Aunt gave me a bottle of Boost!, and one of the original glass mixing/serving decanters (the decanter with the line painted on the outside so you knew exactly how much syrup to pour in.) Well, you would have thought she gave me a million dollars! I was so excited to have my very own supply of Boost! and found out rather quickly how much my roommate and fellow dorm dwellers liked it too! Uggh!
Suzanne (Leeser) LaGrange
West Deptford, NJ 05/08
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My childhood memories from Burlington, NJ just wouldn't be complete without remembering opening up Nana's fridge and grabbing the staple glass jar of Drink a Toast. Especially on hot days when there was no air conditioning in the house, I'd sit out on the back screen porch and drink it with my Grandfather. For years I thought it was called "Tega Boost" (how the grown ups said it). I've been looking for the stuff for years and know exactly what I'll be sending everyone in their Christmas packages! My family has now spread to SC, GA, and upstate NY and we've tried to describe it: "tastes like flat cola-it's the best ice cold!". I remember the bottle was more rectangular in shape- with indents for your fingers in it and a wider mouth than a lite bottle has nowdays, with a metal lid perfect for making a bank out of (I think maybe someone must have). Cheers!
Mrs. Michael Ferentino
Allentown, NJ 06/08
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I lived in Burlington County as a child then moved away for 33 years and then returned three years ago. While I was living in North Carolina, California and Washington DC I always returned home to take back with me a case or two of Boost! to hold me over until my next return. I LOVE IT! And just imagine my surprise when a co-worker told me that Boost! is now in a frozen drink. We immediately ran right out and got one. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
Barbara Urban (Campaign "Boost! forever") 10/08
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I've been drinking Tak-A-Boost! since my mother put it in my baby bottle (I'm 44 by the way..LOL). I don't have any real colorful stories but I do have a picture of my first piggy bank I wanted to send to you, a half gallon boost jug my mother made into a bank for me when I was very young, I'm still using it today! The labels gone but you can't mistake the design and it still has the screw cap with the slit for change! One time I do remember we dropped a gallon jug when we were unloading the groceries at home on the sidewalk after food shopping, immediately we drove back to the store and bought another, couldn't go a day without our glass of Boost!
Enjoy the photo!!!
Robert Harris, Jr. MCSE 10/08
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I grew up in Burlington. BOOST! was ALL that we ever drank!!!! I don't remember ever drinking koolaid and hawaiin punch was a once in a while treat while BOOST! was THE drink. We would make BOOST! snow cones, and BOOST! popsicles, BOOST! ice cubes, drink "milk and BOOST!", BOOST! milkshakes, and even made BOOST! Ice cream!!!! I remember going camping and bringing cases of BOOST! but nothing to mix it in. But that was the easy part. . .a shot of BOOST! in a glass of water and we were very happy!!!
I NEVER knew it was a regional thing. So, when my family moved to Los Angeles when I was about 15, I would go into EVERY store I could looking for BOOST!. Everyone would look at me as if I were crazy!!!! Never heard of it!!!! I was trying to describe it to my office pals and decided to google it and lo and behold your website popped up!!! I am SO HAPPY!!!!! I will be ordering some really soon!!!!!
Rhonda Coty-Cabral
Office Admin/Realtor
Del Sol Realty 11/08
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Love this stuff!
My name is Susan and I was born and grew up all over South Jersey, Burlington, Camden, Riverside, Collingswood. I love Boost!, but at the time it was called Drink A Toast. When I was 15 I moved to upstate NY and no Boost!. I visited family in Cinnaminson area and always managed to get a small bottle of Boost! to take home. In the late 80s, I moved to Orlando, Florida, and no Boost!. But family would visit from the area and manage to bring me some. I just had family visit this week and what do I find on my doorstep, two gallons of Boost!, one of which is nearly gone!!
I can’t tell you how many great memories this brings back and tastes just as good now as it did when I was a kid. Thanks for keeping this memory and product alive!! Now that I can order on line, I will be getting Boost! on a regular basis!! You have made me very happy!!
Susan 03/09
| A Northern Michigander's memory
My husband just handed me a glass of flat Diet Coke tonight and said, "You should contact Coke and suggest they make a flat Coke product, you like it so much!" I said, "There already is one . . . or used to be . . . but better!" I decided to Google "Atoast" and was tickled to find your website and also that your product still exists. My mother lived in Burlington, NJ in the years before she married my father (1955), and in the late '60s when she took us back east for the only time, my Dad, brother, and I experienced "Takaboost" for the first time. We got such a kick out of the name . . . it was so goofily exotic to us young Vernors-loving Detroiters! (I prefer my Vernors flat, too). We brought home two jugs of the delicious syrup . . . and that was it. I have savored the memory since then. And the jugs stayed in our basement until my parents house was sold in 1990! I sure wish I could get it locally and introduce my family to it!
M-E Chaney
Harbor Springs, MI 03/09
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Boost! Memories!
WOW!!! I'm thrilled to have found this website!
I lived in Florence, New Jersey until I was 7 years old (the summer of 1969) and my family moved to Ohio. I remember drinking lots of "teggaboose" as a young child, and it being a staple beverage in our home as well as our neighbors' and relatives' homes in Florence. I also remember being very disappointed at not being able to buy Boost! here in Ohio.
Over the years when we'd return to Florence to visit family, we'd purchase Boost! and attempt to make our special "hometown" drink syrup last as long as possible after returning to Ohio. I recall telling my Ohio friends all about this incredibly delicious beverage, serving it to them, and having not one of them ever be as enamored as I about Boost!. Their midwestern taste buds were not used to such a treat, and the typical response to their first swig of Boost! was "ugh.....this tastes like flat pop". I tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce Boost! to everyone from childhood friends to college roommates; boyfriends and eventually my husband and two young children. The Ohioans in my life never embraced Boost!....which meant that I didn't have to share, so it really worked out well after all.
Now that my children are a few years older than they were the first time they drank Boost!, I'm hoping that their New Jersey ancestry will prevail and they too will become Boost! fans. As we're not big "pop" drinkers in our house, I think I have a better chance converting my kids than my husband, as his well-established taste buds still don't care much for flat pop.
I'll be placing my order for Boost! this week.
Kim Corso
4/09
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My siblings and I grew up in Levittown, Pa. in the 1960's with Drink-A-Toast, and enjoyed it immensely. My Mother worked for the Burlington County Times for 34 years, retiring in January '08 at 81 years of age. She would tell me at about 2:30 in the afternoon, she'd get tired. Her solution was to have a cup of 'Boost!' from the cafeteria soda machine. It would help her get through the day. 'Mom' passed away November 1, 2008. Finding your website, and remembering my 'Mom', and her love of 'Boost!', helped get me through my day today.
With a smile.
Thanks Boost!
Sincerely,
Charles W. Beuter 06/09
| I grew up first in Florence NJ (1950s) and then in Burlington (1960s). Burlington had a BOOST! shop (Riggs) on High Street. Once, that closed, I think I remember that they sold BOOST! in the Burlington News Agency. It was also sold at basketball and football games when I was in high school. When I first moved to Arizona in the late 1990’s, I used to have it shipped to me. I remember that the stores and the school had a dispenser for BOOST!. It had a black plastic base, and a clear or translucent plastic tank on top, square, with the Take-A-Boost logo on it. There was a tap on the front to dispense it. Haven’t seen one of those in many, many years. They sold it in a cup with ice, a long straw in the cup, and hung two pretzels on the straw.
Richard S. White, Jr. , Director
International Wildlife Museum 07/09
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I was raised in Florence, NJ from the time I was born (69 years ago). I lived downtown, and when I was a little kid, I was introduced to Tak-a-Boost over at Joe Travia's neighborhood store. We (my brothers and I) would go over to Joe's, get Tak-a-Boost in one of those paper cones, in a metal holder, with a pretzel hung over a straw. This probably cost a nickel at the time. This is the classic way to enjoy Boost! For over 60 years I have been drinking Boost!. I lived in Kansas for ten years, but I would get a case or two when we visited family back in Jersey. Now we're in Delaware, so it's a lot easier to get. I'm convinced that Tak-a-Boost is the real fountain of youth! Why would everybody in South Jersey look so young? I'll never stop drinking Boost!
Bill Berry (not the mayor!) 07/09
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| Thinking About Boost!
Many memories I have of Riverside was my grandmother's two favorite things the Phillies, and Boost!. I spent most of my childhood in Riverside and it always seemed my grandparents had at least three gallons of Boost! on hand for my father. In the mid eighties we moved to the Nashville area, and we would come to Riverside every summer to see our grandparents. We had a Chevy conversion van and we always left Riverside with about 5 gallon bottles of Boost!, and that lasted my father for a while. Many great memories I have of growing up always seem to come back to Boost!, and for a short time we had Boost! at a local store in Tennessee. My father of course bought many of the bottles that they had on the shelf. Thank you for many great memories, and whenever I am back up I will have to stop in for a Boost!.
Joel Marks
Nashville, Tn 08/09
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Boost!, is there anything else to drink
I grew up in the Palmyra, and Riverside areas in
the 50's. Boost! or Drink A Toast depending on which town you were in was all we
drank. Sitting in either drug store with a glass of Boost!, and a pretzel was
part of growing up in South Jersey. We moved to South Florida in the 70's but
still order Boost! from time to time. Somehow, the taste brings back great
memories of the Center, and the Riverside Fire House dances.
Vic Peditto
Class of 60, Riverside High School 10/09
| Boost! to me is like taking my suitcase on Vacation. No matter where we went Boost! was part of our travel gear. Lets see. I have had it all the way from my original home in Palmyra to Atlantic City. Later as I went to Vietnam it found its way there, then back to Oklahoma and finally to my present home in South Florida for the last 20 years.
Bruce Blackman
Fort Myers, Florida 11/09
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Remembrance of The Tak-a Boost Shop in Palmyra; early 40's
Hi Gang, My memories of the Tak-A-Boost in Palmyra was just brought back to life. I was born at 729 Highland Ave. in Palmyra in 1/11/26. Although having enjoyed boost! over many years my main remembrance is having worked there after schoool while a student at PHS in my junior and senior years. That would be 1942 and 43. I worked after school as a short order cook under the tuteledge of Elmer who was the main kitchen guy. He was portly, always wore his white apron, and smoked a cigar. He taught me how to break eggs onto the grill , 4 at a time, 2 in each hand. He also taught me to cook hamburgers, etc. He was a great teacher and a great guy. Having entered the Navy in June, 1943 out of PHS, as did many of my classmates, I didn't return to Palmyra until early 1946 and the first place I visited was the Tak-A-Boost. It was still there right next to Rodgers News Store. Mrs. Gluyes, a wonderful lady, was tending the counter at Rodgers and gave me a warm welcome home. While in school I had classmates from the Faunce family of Riverside who originated and owned the Tak-A-Boost Shop. Another remembrance of the shop is that during Hi-School a dance floor was opened on the 2nd floor above the shop and at night after basketball games, etc. the kids would climb up the stairs to the 2nd deck and dance to the music of a juke-box. It was a real fire trap and I often wondered how the fire inspectors ever allowed it. There was no exit except down the rickety stairs and there were over a hundred kids up there, and I was one of them. In addition to the kids hanging out there after school drinking their Tak-a-boost with the pretzel hanging over the straw there was another aspect not known by many. They served a really good dinner menu...not fancy, but really good. That's enough nostalgia. Thank the good lord for the Tak-A-Boost Shop back in those years as it served to keep a lot of kids out of trouble and a place to meet friends.
Warren Milroy
PHS Class of 43 11/09
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BOOST!
I grew up in a small Salem County town called Elmer. My grandfather was form Pitman in Gloucester County and he and my grandmother lived there for a few years in the early sixties. I remember having Drink Atoast at their house most every time we went. Gram would use her hand crank ice crusher to chip the ice and then mix the Boost! and water. She would add a straw and we would enjoy it. They always got their supply at a little neighborhood market called J&K on Woodbury Pitman Road. I had been looking for this product for many years and finally a friend discovered that the Acme in Glassboro sometimes had it. Hooray! I went and bought a galllon. My daughter and husband aren't quite sure why I like it so much. Not only is it good, but it brings back so many wonderful memories of Gram and Pop.
Eileen Miller
Woodstown, NJ 11/09
| Boost! story
I grew up in S.Jersey in 70's / 80's. One of my fondest life memories is fishing with my grandparents, generally in the Tuckerton area, always with plenty of Takaboost. I moved west to CA in mid 80's while still in high school. There were many culture shocks, but not finding Takaboost and other food items were the worst. I served six years active Navy and always sought it out wherever I was. I learned then it was a very geographic thing from talking with my peers from all over the country and resigned myself to go without for life. Sometime during my college years in WA state, it was discovered (or became available) we could order it direct. Because of shipping costs, we limited ourselves, but it was always a pleasure to receive for special occasions. Now, at 41 and living in OR, we order it more regularly. Life's too short to go without for too long! Thanks for keeping a great product going.
Mike Wheeler 11/09
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Boost!
Whenever I get down to Riverside, NJ to visit a friend or a relative I always pick up a couple of bottles. I was born in Riverside and grew up on it. It brings back many fond memories. Thanks for keeping the company going.
Margaret 12/09
| Glad I found the web site
I started drinking boost! at a very young age and I am now in my sixties. I moved away from New Jersey in the 60's and have missed being able to find it. For awhile my sister would send it to me but then she moved away. I was so glad to find the web site! I am calling on Monday morning to place an order.
I am really looking forward to getting this wonderful drink. I have missed it.
Helen Kuttler
Tech Support Technician II
Overland Park, KS 66251 01/10
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TakA Boost
I grew up in Burlington, NJ and was related to the Kelly's in Riverside, NJ. I graduated from Burlington High School in 1965 and used to go to Riggs on High St. in Burlington, NJ as much as possible. My dad was a mailman in Burlington, NJ (Francis Reds Ayrer) and after a hot day of delivering mail , he would take me to Riggs and Have a glass of Boost! with crushed ice and a pretzel. That was the best! Thru the years I have delighted with a glass of cold boost! and introduced it to other people through out the state when I taught my classes at Rutger's before I retired. I now live in Myrtle Beach, SC and always bring back a few gallons when I visit.
Thanks for the good times and refreshing drink a toast and taka boost.
Douglas Binky Ayrer 02/10
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Note: Photos and stories should come with permission to print them on this website and in future advertising.
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