🗞️ Cheerwine is closing its Colfax plant as it consolidates operations in Salisbury

🗞️ 100 local veterans return home from the second Triad Honor Flight of the year

🗞️ Downtown Kernersville Cruise-In revs up this Saturday for its 60th-anniversary season

🗞️ Körner’s Folly hits its $20,000 goal to restore the historic pergola

🌤 Overcast, stray storm possible | High: 81°F | Low: 69°F

An overcast, muggy day with a stray shower or thunderstorm possible. Winds out of the south-southeast at 5 to 10 mph. Not a washout, but keep an umbrella close if you’re out and about.

One of North Carolina’s most iconic homegrown brands is shifting its center of gravity — and that means changes just down the road in Colfax. Cheerwine, the cherry-red soft drink bottled by Piedmont/Carolina Beverage, is closing its Colfax facility as the company consolidates its bottling, warehousing and distribution at a newly purchased plant in its hometown of Salisbury, according to the Kernersville News.

The Salisbury move is a big one. Cheerwine paid $7 million for a roughly 176,580-square-foot industrial building at 1302 N. Salisbury Avenue, a site already set up for bottling, warehousing and distribution. Company and local economic-development officials expect the expansion to roughly double Cheerwine’s workforce in Rowan County as it ramps up to keep pace with growing demand across the Southeast.

Cheerwine has deep roots in Salisbury, where it was invented in 1917 and has stayed headquartered for more than a century. For the Triad, the trade-off is bittersweet: the brand is investing heavily in North Carolina, but the familiar Colfax operation that’s long been a neighbor to Kernersville is winding down as the work moves south.

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A big crowd packed Piedmont Triad International Airport around 11 p.m. last Wednesday to welcome home 100 local military veterans returning from the second Triad Honor Flight of the year. The nonprofit’s mission is simple and powerful: fly veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit the memorials built in honor of their service.

This trip carried plenty of local pride. “It was absolutely amazing,” said Triad Honor Flight director Allison DeWitt Huber, who noted the group included a World War II veteran from Winston-Salem, roughly 10 veterans from Kernersville and about 25 total from the Kernersville, Walkertown and Colfax area — along with four sets of brothers and two married couples who had both served. “It is all very meaningful to the veterans, especially for the Vietnam veterans.”

Demand has been so strong — more than 1,000 people on the waitlist — that the organization added a third mission this year, putting 300 veterans on flights in 2026. The first flight took off April 11 with 100 veterans, and a third is set for Sept. 23. Triad Honor Flight is a nonprofit, and donations are tax-deductible.

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Classic-car season returns to Main Street this weekend. The Old Salem Chapter of the Antique Automobile Club of America hosts the first of its five Downtown Kernersville Cruise-Ins this Saturday, June 13, from 4 to 7 p.m. — and it’s a milestone year, with the club celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Expect a street full of classic and antique cars, with DJ Barry Rentz, “The Mobile Jukebox,” spinning music throughout the evening. There will be a 50-50 raffle with door prizes, plus baked goods and drinks for sale from the club.

The best part: every dollar raised goes back into the community. The club decides at year’s end which local groups to support — last year’s recipients included Next Step Ministries, The Shepherd’s Center, the Kernersville Auto Museum and Bethel Methodist Church, which uses the funds to serve free breakfast to veterans on the second Friday of every month.

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A beloved piece of Kernersville’s most famous landmark is one step closer to being saved. The Körner’s Folly Foundation has met its $20,000 goal to restore the historic pergola on the Folly grounds, executive director Suzanna Ritz Malliett announced at last Thursday’s “Party for the Pergola” fundraiser.

The pergola has had a winding history — it began as part of a children’s playhouse, later served as an entrance to the family’s carriage house and stable, and was eventually moved back to the Folly lawn. After decades of weathering, it had deteriorated to the point of being roped off with yellow caution tape, unsafe for visitors and staff.

Malliett credited early supporters, ticket holders and auction donors — and especially the Kernersville Historic Preservation Society, which made the project’s very first donation. Restoration work is set to begin soon.

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