Were bottlers contracted by beverage companies or did they bottle their own product?

[MountainMan304]

Throughout my years of collecting, I never thought about this. For example, when I dig out a hutch and it's embossed "Charleston Bottling Co." does that indicate that the Charleston Bottling Company bottled their own beverages? Or did these bottles usually contain some other company's beverages? Sometimes they have beautiful pictography on the bottles, so I'm assuming that they wouldn't just cover that up with some brand's paper label. I know there are some straight sided cokes here that say "Charleston Bottling Works," so it's obvious that sometimes they were contracted. I'm not sure, it's just something I've come to think about lately.

 

[BottleEnthusiast]

Throughout my years of collecting, I never thought about this. For example, when I dig out a hutch and it's embossed "Charleston Bottling Co." does that indicate that the Charleston Bottling Company bottled their own beverages? Or did these bottles usually contain some other company's beverages? Sometimes they have beautiful pictography on the bottles, so I'm assuming that they wouldn't just cover that up with some brand's paper label. I know there are some straight sided cokes here that say "Charleston Bottling Works," so it's obvious that sometimes they were contracted. I'm not sure, it's just something I've come to think about lately.

I would think if it said another brands name (like coke) that they would bottle that. If it said the botting works name I would think they had some kind of concoction that would be very similar to popular drinks. Sometimes small town bottling works used other companies bottles if they were to poor to make their own bottle and just put the label next to it.

 

[MountainMan304]

I would think if it said another brands name (like coke) that they would bottle that. If it said the botting works name I would think they had some kind of concoction that would be very similar to popular drinks. Sometimes small town bottling works used other companies bottles if they were to poor to make their own bottle and just put the label next to it.

That last part is super interesting! I wonder how many soda companies have gone unknown to time for using that practice...

 

[CanadianBottles]

Could be either one, but for the most part if there's no brand embossed it was probably their own product. The big franchise beverages usually had embossed bottles but sometimes local bottlers would have franchises for smaller brands which wouldn't have specially-embossed bottles. The further back you go the less likely you are to come across franchise products, and I'm not sure if there were any franchise soda brands before the 1880s or so. In the case of a hutch I think it's a pretty safe guess to assume they were bottling their own products.
And as for the very small, forgotten companies, yeah a lot are only known of through old business listings or a single paper label bottle. If you go far enough back sometimes bottlers would even scratch their initials into the bottles to keep track of them if they couldn't afford embossing. I think there was probably quite a lot of both thievery and legitimate purchase of second hand bottles going on which collectors don't know a lot about since it's not obvious without the label still being there. Seltzer bottles will very frequently have a different bottler's name on the metal top than the one etched into the glass, and I suspect the same was done with smaller bottles.

 

[Len]

Good example with the seltzers, CanadianBottles. Here in New England I sometimes find the same bottle being reused by the latest seller unchanged except to put his paper label over the predecessors' resulting in multiple labels.... You know what the ole CT Len saying is--"Its a rice bowl. Everybody eats out of it."...