UC bottling company began in 1907
By CYNTHIA AUKERMAN
News-Gazette reporter
What eventually became Union City Coca-Cola Bottling Company began in 1907 in a small gray frame building on Cedar Street where the Church of the Brethren now stands. O.M. Jefferis and a partner bought out John Hoke and started operating a bottling plant.
The partnership lasted only a couple of months, because, as the company's history records, "there was no need for both of them to starve." That difficult beginning wasn't the last of the hard times encountered by Jefferis, but a strong family effort led to a successful business that survived the Great Depression and World War II.
In the beginning, Jefferis bottled soda in flavors. Soft drinks in 1907 were available in orange, root beer, strawberry and a few others flavors. Jefferis pedaled his products around town in a push cart.
In 1910 Jefferis built a new plant at the back of a lot on North Union Street. That building is still standing.
Jefferis upgraded his delivery system to a horse-drawn dray so he could haul more product. In 1908 he purchased a team of broncos shipped in from the west, and he started making deliveries to surrounding communities. Even with these "modern" improvements, Jefferis could still deliver only in the warm months because the length transportation time would have frozen his product. Winter deliveries were handled by shipping the goods by train or interurban.
Allen Jefferis, grandson of O.M., makes sure his grandmother, Maggie Jefferis, gets her fair share of credit for the business' start. While O.M. was delivering product to places like Ridgeville, Maggie Jefferis was running the bottling plant.
A company history calls Maggie the "best worker" the company had. Allen Jefferis says, "My grandmother ran the plant. The kids washed the bottles. Grandfather would be on the road with the horse and buggy trying to sell the product, and with that transportation, he had to stay overnight even in communities as close as Ridgeville."
Meanwhile, Maggie Jefferis was operating the plant off Union Street and raising a family of four boys - Armand, Donald, Duane and Verl.
In 1913 O.M. purchased one of the earliest motor trucks to work in Randolph County. It was a chain-drive, solid-tired McEntire Truck. With the truck, he was able to serve more territory with more regularity.
With the purchase of its first bottle-washing machine in 1915, the business took another step up.
In that year O.M. developed an interest in a drink from the South called Coca-Cola. He learned that a man in Dayton, Ohio had the franchise for the area. That man was so discouraged about the future of the new product that he tried to get O.M. to come to Dayton to run his plant for him.
O.M. told the man he didn't want to leave Union City and his own seven-year-old business, so the man offered to sell him the Dayton plant and the Coca-Cola franchise for everything within 50 miles of Dayton for $24,000 cash and $12,000 in notes.
That was a huge amount of money in 1915, and O.M. didn't have it. He borrowed from everybody he knew and came up with the required amount. However, riding the Interurban down to Dayton to complete the deal, O.M. began to have second thoughts about the great risk he would be taking with money from his friends and relatives, and he changed his mind.
The deal would have included Piqua, Portland, Union City and Dayton. A year or so later, he paid almost that same amount just for the Union City franchise.
Next: Coca-Cola came to Union City, but customers weren't a bit sure they liked the newfangled soft drink.
