The Tastee Freez on Jewel Lake has stood there for decades, and it's not going away anytime soon — just changing hands.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Twenty eight years ago, Rich Owens was entrusted with running the ever-popular, nostalgia-inducing Jewel Lake Tastee Freez, a place that — at the time — had been under the same owners for more than three decades.Owens has now owned the franchise location for nearly as long as his predecessors. His neighbors ran a Tastee Freez in his hometown in Montana, he said, and he worked for them in high school and into college, which helped kick off his love of the national franchise.
“We learned it by just observing,” he said of his community service, including that which his business had allowed over the years, and the inspiration his parents provided as he was growing up. “That was never a discussion. We just, that’s how it happened.” “It’ll be an adjustment,” he laughed, though still wrought with emotion. “It’s a change. But it’s okay.”
Despite the relationships he’s built with so many people over the years, and his enjoyment of seeing how the kids he employed grew up, Owens is grappling with stepping back and into a new role. Passing the torch to one of his own has helped make the transition a little bit easier, he said, though his departure is no doubt bittersweet for him and many others.