In the 1900s, New York City looked a lot different than it does today. Taxi cabs were still horse-drawn, and much of Manhattan remained covered in farmland. This is why it is fitting that the Elmhurst story begins with a small herd of cattle.

The cows were purchased on Manhattan, and escorted across the Williamsburg Bridge to the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens. Here the buyer’s sons, Max and Arthur Schwartz, saw an opportunity. In the 1920s, they began hand-bottling the milk in their father’s milk house. Calling the operation Elmhurst Dairy, they delivered the fresh milk throughout Brooklyn and Queens in a delivery truck filled with ice blocks.

Since these humble roots, Elmhurst has grown to be one of the largest dairy manufacturers on the East Coast, supplying a metropolitan area of seven million people. Almost a century later, it remains family-owned by Max’s son, Henry Schwartz.

Recently Elmhurst has made a major shift to lead the plant-based revolution. Now simply called Elmhurst, its minimally processed nutmilks are just as nutritious and pure as its famous conventional milk, with none of the emulsifiers, thickeners or stabilizers used in other leading brands.