 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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