Why are there no national brands of milk?

Because no milk company is big enough to distribute to all parts of the country, and the government cannot participate in the economy in that fashion [selling goods to the public].

Milk is better when it is local anyway.

Milk would be very hard to create a brand from. First off, there is no real difference between milks, so it’s hard to distinguish your product (compare to a cracker, which is easy to change the formula of). Two, it would be very hard to create a supply chain that ensured the milk all tasted the same apart from creating a massive milk farm and distributing it from there, and then there’s the issue about freshness and quality of milk being transported thousands of miles. That then leads into the cost of such a brand of milk, which would certainly be higher than your local variety of milk due to shipping, cooling, sanitizing, etc.

To go along with what @dynamicduo said, I worked at a dairy for a while, primarily boxing cartons of milk. The machines were the same, the milk was the same. The only difference was the cartons we’d feed into the machine. We’d do a run of brand X, we’d do a run of brand Y, then we’d do a run of brand Z, etc. At the end of the cycle, we’d ship them out to various places around the western US.

Whole Foods 365 brand

WOW! I’m so not buying Purity milk anymore. Overpriced crap.

Thanks phoenyx.

Many other factories do exactly what @phoenyx says. Chip factories are notorious for this, simply switch the bags and now they’re producing your grocery’s chain of chips instead of Name Brand Chips.

Most places do that for store brand stuff. There are very few things you need name brand on.

Having said that, good milk is one of those things. I get skim straight from the dairy and it is so rich and delicious it tastes like one or two percent without making my mouth feel gross from the fat. It’s great.

Beyond that, Horizon is a national brand of milk. I’m sure there are others. We get Horizon in Chicago, got in Seattle, got it in Richmond, got it in New Orleans. I’m pretty sure it goes anywhere.

@EmpressPixie Never heard of Horizon Milk, in New England or New York.

Edit – never mind. I see now it’s an “Organic” brand. That would explain why I’ve never noticed it. Their product locator does indeed show it’s carried by my local supermarkets.

We have Hood and Garrilick Farms as the two that come to mind immediately.

Are you saying Lucerne can’t be found all over the US?

@YARNLADY Never heard of it, so at least not in Connecticut.

What’s lucerne? Have you ever heard of Purity milk? Sweet acidophilus for the win!

Lucerne is a store brand, you can only find it at Dominicks and their siblings.