Where was Long Island’s favorite place to get the bread and milk (and eggs)? Dairy Barn of course! The little red drive-thru farmhouse convenience store still exists on Long Island starting out as an extension of a failing milk farm to corporate takeovers. Below we present some crazy and historical facts about Dairy Barn.
- In 1939, Swiss immigrant Edgar Cosman bought Oak Tree Dairy Farm in East Northport
- Cosman was first sent to the U.S. by his father, a businessman, to work in his company’s factory
- The young Cosman was stranded here when WWII broke out
- When the farm he bought started losing money, he left it up to his son Dieter to figure out
- Dieter turned around the milk farm but in time people began losing interest in having milk delivered so he had to figure something out
- In 1961 Dieter expanded the wholesale milk business and opened a retail chain of drive-thru convenience stores; Dairy Barn was born
- The stores looked the same throughout the years, with a barn-shaped store, little red silo, and two canopied driveways
- This was the first drive-thru convenience store on Long Island
- At its height, there were about 70 Dairy Barns across Long Island
- In 2015 there were 51 Dairy Barns
- Company president Hari Singh once told the New York Times that "Dairy Barn is as far as you can get from the superstore experience.”
- In the same article, Kim Martin, a clerk at the Syosset location said, "We see at least 10 people a day in pajamas."
A Dairy Barn commercial supporting Sesame Street. Video: YouTube
- The Oak Tree Dairy plant had a devastating fire in 1997, luckily no one was killed
- It took a year and $11 million to rebuild, according to The New York TImes
- At the time, Oak Tree produced around 21.8 million gallons of milk a year
- The Cosman family eventually sold its original dairy farm to a developer
- The 37-acre property was converted into a 55-and-over condo community
- According to the Untapped New York website, in 2010 Mike and Aegina Angeliades, a father and daughter from Long Island, took over the Dairy Barns and renamed them The Barn as part of a rebranding
- Their company, Simi Enterprises took over 38 existing locations
- People on Long Island still called them “Dairy Barn”
- There are other similar-looking convenience stores with drive-thrus that Long Islanders generically call Dairy Barn even though they are not
- The Barn’s drive-thru business concept did well during the pandemic
- It was reported that The Barn merged with a company called Greek From Greece around 2019
- According to reports, Greek From Greece expanded to New York introducing an express concept through a merger with The Barn
- At the time the company said thirty locations would be converted to Greek From Greece Express model locations, called GFG Express
- Greek From Greece started by selling their own brand of greek imported goods at the stores
- The company website lists 23 GFG Express locations on Long Island
- According to a report, GFG returned the stores to Simi Enterprises in November 2022
Timeline of Dairy Barn milk bottles. Photo: Dary Barn website.
- Simi recently put 17 former Dairy Barn properties up for sale
- Entrepreneurs are buying or leasing the properties and converting them back to Dairy Barn-like drive thru convenience stores
- The Simi owners plan to continue to operate a few stores themselves, including ones in Huntington and another in St. James
- Founder Dieter Cosman was an avid scuba diver and shell collector
- His shell collection included 117,000 specimens
- The collection ended up being valuable for scientific research and gifted to Occidental College after he died
