[1] While evaporated milk was popular before refrigerators were common in homes, sales peaked in the 1950s and it is now a niche product used in baking and as a cooking ingredient.

This gave it ownership of consumer brands like Old El Paso Mexican foods, Progresso soups, Whitman's chocolates, Underwood canned meats, and others.

Smucker in 2004 who spun off its US sweetened condensed and evaporated milk operations, including PET, as Eagle Family Foods Group in 2014.

[3] On February 14, 1885, they founded the Helvetia Milk Condensing Company,[4] named after the Latin word for Switzerland,[5] with US$15,000 in funds collected from other local farmers and businessmen including Louis Latzer, George Roth, and Fred Kaeser.

The new equipment required frequent adjustment, the factory was short of water and the company had to drill a number of additional wells, and, most concerning, cases of its milk began spoiling on store shelves.

Assisted by Dr. Werner Schmidt, Wildi, and Knoebel, all of whom had studied chemistry, the company determined that the spoilage had been caused by bacteria and resolved the problem.

Wildi led the company's marketing efforts and, after seeing the benefits from its actions after the Galveston fire, one major strategy was to send in free product following natural disasters.

[3] The "Our Pet Evaporated Cream" brand was introduced when a New Orleans food broker asked Helvetia for a "baby-sized" can that could be sold for a nickel.

[citation needed] To fulfill these large government orders, Helvetia built a second plant in Greenville, Illinois and bought and converted a limburger cheese factory in New Glarus, Wisconsin to milk production in 1910.

[7] The next year, it established a subsidiary, "Pet Dairy Products Company", to start selling fluid milk produced at its newly-acquired Johnson City plant.

[11] Most notable of her marketing efforts was Proetz's development of a pseudonym, "Mary Lee Taylor", who was said to be a "nutritionist and home economist" for Pet Milk.

[12] Under this character, Proetz began making bi-weekly radio broadcasts in 1933 offering recipes and cooking tips which incorporated Pet Milk.

The second half would be "Mary Lee Taylor" discussing her recipes and cooking tips while promoting Pet Milk products.

[6] Pet acquired Michigan-based Pet-Ritz Foods Company in 1955, a deal orchestrated by Louis Latzer's grandson Theodore Gamble,[6] and established a Canadian subsidiary.

General Milk itself operated a number of joint ventures including with Standard Brands in Brazil and Beechnut-Life Savers in West Germany.

[15] The company became a food products conglomerate in the early 1960s, purchasing or developing many new brands, as Gamble steered its focus toward the more profitable specialty and snack markets.

[7] In 1962, Pet announced the closing of its factory in New Glarus[17] but bought Laura Scudder's, a California producer of snack foods, peanut butter, and mayonnaise, from the Signal Oil and Gas Company.

[7] Stuckey's did produce pecan candy, which fit nicely with Pet's Funsten business, but also owned and operated 27 roadside stores.

Continuing with its expansion strategy, Pet bought Aunt Fanny's Bakery in Atlanta in 1966 and in 1967 Schrafft's restaurants for US$14 million.

While Pet was in the process of moving Hussmann production to a new US$13 million St. Louis site from two old plants, a teamsters strike impacted the division's performance.

The strike combined with negative market pressures due to slower housing and supermarket building meant Hussmann's performance was flagging.

With Schenk at the helm of the entire company, Pet saw record earnings, invested more in advertising than it had been, and continued to create new products, especially those aimed at nice markets.

[22] After almost tripling its revenue in 12 years to US$1.1 billion in 1977, Pet became the target of an unfriendly takeover bid by IC Industries (ICI) completed in 1978.

[23] The deal was complicated by the fact that Pet was in the midst of negotiations to finalize its acquisition of restaurant chain Hardee's which it had agreed to buy for US$95 million in March 1978.

[6] ICI, named for the Illinois Central Railroad and led by former Railway Express Agency president William B. Johnson, was a Chicago-based conglomerate.

It already owned diverse assets including the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad, the American Brake Shoe Company, real estate in Chicago and New Orleans, Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers, Dad's Root Beer Company, Midas International, and the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

[24] Pet's sold its Musselman division in 1981 to MFP Enterprises of Vincentown, New Jersey for US$35 million[25] and was subsequently bought by Knouse Foods in 1984.

[32] By the mid 1980s, Pet had undergone significant restructuring going from 30 operating divisions to 4 groups: Grocery, Specialty, Frozen & Baker, and International.

[6] Pet's parent company ICI changed its name to Whitman Corp. in 1988 and sold its railroad and defense units to focus on food products.

[39] A year later, General Mills agreed to acquire Pillsbury, and with it the PET brand and its evaporated milk and dry creamer product lines, from Diageo.