"We keep it cold, keep it fresh, and keep it moving," says Laurent Barbe, Jr., general manager of Barbe's Dairy. More than a slogan, the commitment to quality dairy products and customer service is the cornerstone of the Westwego-based company's business, and the guiding principle that has made Barbe's Dairy one of the most trusted and recognizable names in milk.
Barbe's Dairy, like the city, has its roots in the Old World; Victor Barbe, Sr. came to New Orleans from rural France in 1908, and ten years later he built a barn on a track of land in Westwego. With a herd of 18 cows, Barbe was soon producing enough fresh milk and dairy products to barter with his neighbors and get a small business going.
"In those days," says Laurent "Larry" Barbe, Sr., Victor's son, "if you had a cow, you'd give your neighbor some milk, and they might give you something from their garden." It was a tradition Victor Barbe brought with him when he came to America. "In the farm country in France, people would make their own cheese, butter-they were mostly self-sufficient," Barbe says.
One of Victor Barbe's most sought-after products was the yogurt-like specialty prized by New Orleanians. "My daddy made a lot of Creole cream cheese," Larry Barbe says.
In those early days, there were more than two dozen independent dairies and milk processors in the city; by the mid-1940's, however, when Larry Barbe returned home from World War II, the smaller companies had already begun to disappear or be taken over by larger ones. Barbe began to expand the Westwego facility, building a small processing facility where the farm's milk could be pasteurized and bottled more efficiently. "The first day I had pasteurized milk, I was very, very proud," he says. Before long, the company introduced chocolate milk to its product line and expanded its door-to-door delivery service to several neighborhoods on both sides of the Mississippi River.