Remember the Milkman? In Some Places, He’s Back (Published 2007) (2024)

STEPHANIE MONAHAN fondly recalls having milk delivered to her front door by the local milkman when she was a young girl growing up on the outskirts of Boston. So, a few months ago, when she saw an old-fashioned milk truck chugging up the hill of her new neighborhood in Milton, Mass., she chased after it to find out if it made home deliveries.

“Sure enough, they did. I was so happy,” Mrs. Monahan said.

Now a company called Thatcher Farm delivers three half-gallons of milk in glass bottles, along with other dairy products, to her home each week. She estimates that she pays about 50 cents a bottle more for the convenience of not having to go to the supermarket.

“I’ve got a 17-year-old son at home and he drinks a lot of milk; we all do,” she said.

There was an added benefit for Mrs. Monahan. “I’m a 55-year-old boomer and it’s nice to have someone else lugging those milk bottles around. Those big containers you get from the store are very heavy,” she said. With home delivery, she takes them from an insulated milk box next to the back door.

Home milk delivery from local dairies and creameries was a mainstay for many families in the 1950s and ’60s. But as it became easier and cheaper to buy milk at the grocery store, and as processes were developed to extend milk’s shelf life, the milkman began to fade into the past.

The earliest survey from the Department of Agriculture on home milk delivery was in 1963, when nearly 29.7 percent of consumers had milk delivered. By 1975, the number had dropped to 6.9 percent of total sales, and by 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available, to just 0.4 percent.

Now the milkman appears to be making a comeback, thanks to people like Mrs. Monahan. In addition to appreciating the convenience, consumers like to buy a fresh, local product.

Norm Monsen, a consultant for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, says a milkman renaissance is starting to take shape in many parts of the country. Consumers, he said, are increasingly willing to pay the $2 typical premium for a gallon of home-delivered milk over the store-bought variety.

“I would say, seven years ago, there was little to no home delivery of milk going on in Wisconsin. Now we have about five companies doing that,” he said. “And that’s a big deal because we don’t have a huge population in Wisconsin. I’ve seen it growing throughout the Midwest.”

For Oberweis Dairy in North Aurora, Ill., home delivery customers have increased to 40,000 from 10,000 in 1997.

“A component of it is the nostalgia and the quality of milk the home dairies offer,” said Bob Renaut, president and chief executive of Oberweis.

It was the quality and convenience that persuaded Nancy Tait, of Naperville, Ill., to start home delivery for her family. “I had been buying milk from the supermarket and I got a hanger ad on my door and some telephone marketing calls about home delivery from Oberweis. I thought, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ ”

Ms. Tait said that while she was growing up, her family always had home delivery. In fact, she still remembers the milkman’s name: Fred.

“The concept wasn’t a foreign thing to me,” she said. “I just didn’t know they did it anymore.”

Now she’s friends with Ed, her Oberweis milkman. “For the holidays I leave him cookies,” she said. “On Halloween, I left him a bag of candy with a thank-you note.”

The process is simple. The milkman puts the milk in a cooler near the front door once a week, and Ms. Tait puts the empty milk bottles out the night before the deliveries and he takes them away.

Oberweis washes, inspects and refills the bottles, Mr. Renaut said.

It’s pretty much the way it was a half-century ago. The only change is that many customers can now place their orders on the Internet. “If I go away or on vacation, I just go online and cancel or change the order date,” Ms. Tait added.

At the South Mountain Creamery in Middletown, Md., demand for home milk delivery is so high that the company has a waiting list of about 350 families in Maryland, northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., said Tony Brusco, the manager.

The creamery started delivering milk from the back of a Ford Explorer in 2001, he said, and now has seven milk trucks and 2,000 customers. “We haven’t advertised,” he added. “We just have grown with word of mouth.”

The customer base of Thatcher Farm, where Mrs. Monahan gets her milk, has grown by a third in two years, to 2,000, said Joe Manning, co-owner of the company.

About 45 years ago, Thatcher had its own cows and distributed its own milk, but today it is mainly a distributor, getting the actual product from a nearby dairy.

“We got rid of our last cow in 1962,” Mr. Manning said.

In many cases, small dairy farms work with local distributors to deliver their milk to local consumers.

Catamount Farm, a small dairy distributor based in Barnstead, N.H., gets its milk from two local farms and makes about 300 home deliveries a week, said Ron Panneton, Catamount’s owner. The company charges $3.25 for a half-gallon of milk and has a $2 weekly delivery charge.

He said he and his wife started the business in 2002 and have had a consistent 35 percent sales growth rate each year. “We started home delivery after 9/11 because we saw people pulling everything in back close — not traveling as much, not wanting products from far away,” explained Mr. Panneton, a former carpenter. “The idea was to bring back the milkman. People really responded to that.”

When they started, they didn’t expect milk deliveries to become a full-time business. “We were mostly doing beekeeping and selling bee products,” Mr. Panneton said, but within a year they realized that “it just keeps growing,”

A majority of milk delivery workers are still men. But Mr. Panneton’s wife, Robin, also makes deliveries along with himself and three staff members. So “milk person” may be a more appropriate name today, he said.