This enterprise was founded in 1915 by Jacob Cohn, a 19-year-old Lithuanian immigrant. Cohn started by selling coffee to local restaurants and cafeterias. By 1920, he had 15 employees. By the 1940s, when the company marketed coffee through a national network of salesmen, annual sales approached $1 million. Starting in the 1950s, the company expanded rapidly by buying competitors. Annual sales rose from about $30 million in the early 1960s to over $1 billion by the early 1980s. By 1973, when the company changed its name to CFS Continental, coffee was only a small part of its food business. In 1988, when CFS ranked as the third-largest food distributor in the nation, it was purchased by a competitor, the Sysco Corp. of Houston, Texas.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.