Solo Cup history

Before Leo Hulseman started the company on Chicago’s South Side during the Great Depression, the South Dakota native was a salesman for Vortex Manufacturing Company in Chicago, which used a machine patented in 1920 by local inventor David F. Curtin to make cone-shaped paper cups.

The company has been family-owned and operated since it started in 1936.

He bought that machine in 1940 from its inventor, George Method Merta, a Chicagoan who’d immigrated from the tiny mountain town of Metylovice in Czechoslovakia.

She took up singing again at her husband’s insistence, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1959. “He was very focused on giving her something to do,” Paul Hulseman explains.

In 1966, nine of her grandchildren appeared on the television show I’ve Got a Secret, hosted by Steve Allen. “Our secret was our grandmother just released her first rock ’n’ roll record,” Paul recalls. “When they figured it out, my grandmother came out and sang a song.”

Around the same time “plastics” was a punch line in 1967’s The Graduate, Solo Cup was seeking a better way to make cups out of the stuff.

Today, the company still keeps offices in Lincolnshire, but the nearest to Chicago you will find production of its red plastic party cup is that Urbana factory, which opened in 1973.

TV critics weren’t kind. “Dora Hall has set a precedent—television’s first vanity hour,” Indianapolis News critic Richard K. Shull wrote in 1974.

On June 30, 1980, SOLCO, Inc. and RM LEASING CORPORATION merged into Solo Cup Company.

The manager is a guy named Mike Oakley who started here in 1983 and has all the levity of Tommy Lee Jones.

Grandpa would go to the grocery stores and… he bartered TV ads for shelf space.” In addition to his work in music and television, Leo Hulseman (who died in 1989) also was also active in the sport of polo, playing as the Solo Cup team’s captain at the Oak Brook Polo Club.

“It’s just this emotional connection people have to this brand,” says Kim Healy, Solo’s vice president for consumer products marketing and innovation, who has worked for the company since 1998.

Solo has tweaked the design of its iconic party cup, adding indented grooves in 2003 so that the cup would be easier to grip.

And New York’s Museum of Modern Art featured the widely praised lid in a 2004 exhibit of “Humble Masterpieces.”

In 2005, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City added a Solo Cup Traveler's Lid to its permanent collection.

Even as the Hulsemans’ creations continued to gain prominence, the family lost control of their company to a private equity firm in 2006.

In 2008, they partnered with Bare® to come out with cups that are made from 20% recycled materials.

Solo Cup Company closed its longstanding facility in Highland Park, Illinois, in December 2009 and relocated to Lake Forest, Illinois.

On May 4, 2012, Solo Cup Company was acquired by Dart Container.

Bhaba, L. (2013, December 27). The History of Beer Pong.

Francis, K. (2014, March 21). Red Solo Cups – The Hottest American Souvenir? Retrieved from, https://souvenirfinder.com/2014/03/21/red-solo-cups-beer-pong-souvenir-american-party-cups/

"Dude throws hummingbird frat party with Solo cup of nectar"–The Daily Dot, Dec 2015

Shreeves, R. (2017, May 31). 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Red Solo Cups.

A cultural history of the ubiquitous red Solo party cup, July 3, 2018. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

"No, the lines around the original Solo cup were not created to represent various measurements"–PolitiFact, Jun 2019

In 2020, they partnered with Feeding America® to provide 1.5 million meals to families in need across the country.