While the West Loop rapidly changes from meat-packing to hot restaurants and condos, one company wants to bring back a type of food business that the area lost long ago: dairy.
"In 1910, Chicagoland had over 200 milk bottlers in the city. That same year, McHenry County was the third largest dairy producer in the country," says Travis Pyykkonen. He wants his company, 1871 Dairy, to turn the West Loop into a hub for ultra-fresh dairy products made with local milk from pastured cows.
Many Americans have never had milk that tastes truly good—milk that's worth tasting by itself rather than just pouring over cereal. I certainly never had it until I briefly lived in Sweden, where I had Arla's Gammaldags Mjolk ("old fashioned milk"), a fatty, delicious milk that tasted of spring flowers and butter. A milk I drank despite being genetically lactose intolerant. My attempts to find such milk locally in the past were thwarted by milk that, while it certainly better than commodity milk, separated and spoiled easily. And then I had 1871's milk.
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