First Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the United States

The contract mattered more than the plant. Asa Candler sold the two lawyers exclusive rights to bottle Coca-Cola across most of the country, and the Coca-Cola Company later spent decades buying those rights back. Seeing they needed a franchise system, Thomas, Whitehead and Lupton split the territory and created parent bottlers that licensed local ones. In 1902 Thomas sold the Chattanooga plant, the first franchised Coca-Cola bottler in the world, to focus on franchising. By the 1950s about eleven hundred franchises descended from the parent companies, and the company bought Thomas's parent firm in 1974.

What the plaque says

First Coca-Cola Bottling Company In The United States On July 21, 1899, two Chattanooga lawyers, Benjamin Franklin Thomas and Joseph Brown Whitehead, signed a contract with the Coca-Cola Company granting them the exclusive rights to bottle Coca-Cola in most of the United States. Another Chattanooga citizen, John Thomas Lupton, provided financial backing for the future development of the bottling business. The first Coca-Cola Bottling Company began operations at this site in November 1899.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — steps away
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 0.7 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Ross's Landing — 0.8 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 0.9 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.

More markers nearby

• Martin Hotel — steps away
• Abby Crawford Milton — steps away
• William "Uncle Bill" Lewis — steps away
• Walden Hospital — 0.3 mi