Food - Drink
The 93-Year-Old Dairy Farm That Switched From Cows To Plants
By CLAIRE REDDEN
In the early 1900s, a man bought a herd of cows in Manhattan and walked them over the Williamsburg Bridge to the family farm in Elmhurst, Queens. Less than 20 years later, the man's grandsons, Max and Arthur Schwartz, began bottling milk with labels that read "Elmhurst Dairy," but today, the brand is changing things up.
Americans are becoming more inclined towards plant-based, environmentally friendly alternatives to animal products. The steady decline in dairy consumption concerned Henry Schwartz, who had kept Elmhurst Daisy in the family for over 90 years, so he decided to look into plant-based, eco-friendly dairy alternatives.
In 2017, Schwartz decided to collaborate with Dr. Cheryl Mitchell, a food scientist searching for a large-scale investor for her proprietary cold water system, which can liquefied nuts, oats, and rice and retain all of their natural proteins without the need for stabilizers or thickeners. This collaboration led to the birth of Elmhurst Milked.
"Making plant milk might have seemed like a radical turn after a life in dairy — yet to me, it was perfectly logical, probably even necessary," Schwartz said. Today, you can find their "Milked" line of cashew, walnut, pistachio, almond, hazelnut, and oat milks and creamers in stores across the country, all labeled with the Elmhurst name.