OCTOBER 10 • 2019 | 15
W
hen Rena Tepman,
son Larry and cous-
in Dan Grubner
separately do their personal
grocery shopping, they can
spend as many as three hours
in a supermarket.
It’
s not that they’
re preoccu-
pied with food; it’
s that they’
re
preoccupied with containers.
The three are among five
generations of a family owning
and/or working for Porter
Bottle Company in Downtown
Detroit, their base for distrib-
uting glass and plastic contain-
ers; and they want to keep up
to the minute on trends and
popular choices.
“We don’
t just pick our
favorite brand of salad dress-
ing,
” co-owner Larry says to
provide an example of what
takes up their time. “We look
at every single salad dressing
bottle. Dan, our operations
manager, has called me on the
weekends from someplace,
excited about a new bottling
line he has noticed.
“I think it’
s in our blood.
”
Porter Bottle Company
has offices on Fort Street and
operates a nearby warehouse
spanning 45,000 square
feet and holding some 900
different containers among
hundreds of thousands of total
items. Their Detroit presence,
since 1936, is maintained
because it’
s central to many
continuing customers and
holds easy access for Canadian
businesses.
The family, which continued
operations after a devastating
fire in 1977, is proud to service
local individual customers
who are starting out — and
perhaps short of one bottle
cap — as well as large North
American manufacturers
needing as many as 35,000
containers with as many caps.
THE COMPANY’
S ROOTS
Porter Bottle Company was
started by Rena’
s parents,
Dave and Ida Schwartz.
Among the diverse products,
beyond foods and beverag-
es, that eventually fill their
in-stock containers are cos-
metics, medicines and clean-
ing solvents.
“My mom and dad started
Porter Bottle right after they
got married using the money
they received as wedding
gifts,” Rena says. “My dad
had worked for my grand-
father, Sam Schwartz, who
washed and sold used bottles
after coming to the United
States from Hungary.
“It was like recycling as
my grandfather worked out
of a backyard shed before
selling the bottles back to the
original factory or others. My
grandfather was the bottle
cleaner, and my dad was the
salesman and the delivery
guy. My grandmother, Sadie,
handled the books.”
Although Rena’
s grandpar-
ents wanted her dad to join
the established business and
make it C.S. Schwartz & Son,
Rena’
s parents had a spinoff
idea.
“My grandparents said
they needed to do their own
thing,” Larry explains. “My
great-grandfather stayed on
the east side, and my grand-
parents purchased an exist-
ing business on Fourth and
Porter — the Porter Bottle
Exchange. They set up on the
west side, eventually transi-
tioning into handling only
new glass bottles before add-
ing plastics in the 1960s.
“Eight years later, my
great-grandfather closed his
business and came to my
grandfather asking to work
with him. He was there from
continued on page 16
FACING PAGE: Dan Grubner of Oak Park, 11-year-old Jillian Dickman of West
Bloomfield, Rena Tepman of West Bloomfield, Larry Tepman of West Bloomfield
and 9-year-old Jordyn Tepman of West Bloomfield
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