Their story starts in 1912 with a Boston inventor named Lawrence Luellen, who
crafted a two-piece cup made out of a blank of paper. He joined the American
Water Supply Company, the brainchild of a Kansas-born Harvard dropout, Hugh
Moore. The two began dispensing individual servings of water for a penny—one
cent for a five-ounce cup from a tall, clumsy porcelain water cooler. Soon they
were the Individual Drinking Cup Company of New York and had renamed their
sole product the Health Kup. The name was changed to “Dixie Cup” in 1919.

Hugh Everett Moore (1887-1972), Dixie Cup
Company president

1950’s

Marvin Chester Stone is best known as the inventor of the
modern drinking straw. By 1890, his factory in Washington
D.C. was producing more drinking straws than cigarette
holders. A machine was invented in 1906 by Stone’s
“Stone Straw Corporation” to automatically wind the
straws.