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Business View Magazine
The Chesterman Company
Five generations of soft drink service
It may be hard to imagine, but there was time before
Coke was the “real thing” much less the world’s most
popular soft drink. In fact, when Cilo Chesterman
founded his bottling company in 1872, in Dyersville,
Iowa, Coca-cola didn’t even exist. At that time, sever-
al decades after soda water was first introduced into
the United States, and almost a century after English
chemist, Joseph Priestly, invented the bubbling con-
coction by infusing carbon dioxide into water, the pre-
vailing soft drink tastes ran from plain club soda, also
known as mineral water, to root beer, sarsaparilla, and
ginger ale.
And, of course, there were no dispensing machines
then, either. According to Jay Chesterman, Cilo’s great,
great, great grandson, and co-owner with his brother
Cy of the Chesterman Company, now based in Sioux
City, Iowa, in those days, “we would sell off a horse
and buggy.” In fact, it wasn’t until 1904, when Cilo’s
son, C.B. Chesterman took over the firm, that Coca-Co-
la was added to the company’s line-up of sweetened
soda waters. And even then, the new product didn’t do
well. “Coke really didn’t take off until the 1920s,” says
the fifth generation Chesterman. “When we first took
it on, there was a period in the early 1900s, when we
