Hotel Bar Butter was trade-marked in 1947 by Frederick F. Lowenfels & Son, 365 Greenwich St., New York City. (Lowenfels was president of Hotel Bar Foods, Inc., a butter wholesaler.) But the Keller family dairy in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania had been using the Hotel Bar name to market its butter in the New York metropolitan area from as early as 1885. (Keller sold the same butter in the greater Philadelphia area as Keller's, founded in 1906.) In 1967 Keller's was sold to Borden Foods, who later sold it to Beatrice Foods, who sold it to Sodiaal North America, a U.S. subsidiary of the French food conglomerate SODIAAL (Societé de Diffusion Internationale Agro-Alimentaire). Some time around 1990 the enterprise was re-named Keller's Creamery.
Click here for cover of pad of butter served in New York coffee shop June 2002, which reads "Dist and guaranteed by Keller's/Hotel Bar a division of Sodiaal North America Corp. Harleysville PA 19438."
Click here for photo of this sign in its complete state in 1979.
This ad for Frederick F. Lowenfels & Son appeared in the New York Produce Review and American Creamery, 19 March 1919.
Copyright © 2002 Walter Grutchfield
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