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The comeback of the milkman? Dairy providers are cashing in

By STAN MADDUX

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — It might be a stretch to think home delivery of milk will become what it was when much of the nation in the 1950s had the service – but there is “udderly” a comeback brewing nationwide.

The milkman is making rounds more often in Indiana and Ohio, along with states from coast to coast. Matt Ewer, president of Green Bean Delivery in Indianapolis, said he’s not sure how far the cream of doorstep delivery will keep rising but likes the milkman’s staying power because of the growth in popularity of locally produced food and emergence of online grocery delivery.

“It’s ironic that I feel like agriculture is just trying to get back to what it used to be and consumers are open to those things,” said Ewer.

He 10 years ago founded the company that delivers milk, organic produce, grass-fed beef and a variety of other grocery items to doorsteps in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Missouri. He has about 150 employees serving a steadily growing customer base well into the thousands, he said.

His milk suppliers are small, family-owned dairies providing non-homogenized and low pasteurized product in both the plastic containers and old-style glass bottles. The cost is about $4.99 a gallon, but his customers are willing to pay more for what he claims is a noticeable difference in taste and to support local farmers.

Ewer’s customers just recently offered memberships allowing milk to come from the dairy of their choosing and deliveries to be on a set schedule, to avoid having to go online each time to place orders. “We’re interested in subscriptions, just like the old milkman type of way.”

Some companies have drivers go up to doorsteps in the familiar white suits and caps worn by the milkman from back in the day, to enhance the nostalgia of the experience. That was the standard uniform at Shatto Milk Co. in Kansas City, Mo., when the more-than-a-century-old dairy with its own brand of bottled milk on supermarket shelves branched out into home delivery of milk two years ago.

Now, the traditional uniform is worn just occasionally because of how busy things have become since fresh produce and many other products like bread, butter, coffee and already prepared meals were added to the online menu for delivery.

“As you can imagine, running as many stops as they do on a daily basis, those whites can get pretty doggone dirty, pretty doggone quick,” said Matt Shatto, a fourth-generation owner of the business.

He said his customer base has grown to about 8,000. “We’re on a clip to grow over 100 percent this year and expect the same for next year.”

Oberweiss Dairy near Chicago offering home deliveries of its milk locally and in other states like Michigan and North Carolina is just another of the many examples of how the old service is becoming new and beginning to spread again.

According to the USDA, more than half of the milk produced in the 1950s was home-delivered but shrank to about 30 percent by the early 1960s as larger suppliers and their low prices reflected on supermarket shelves began taking a foothold.

Just 0.4 percent of milk wound up on doorsteps in 2005, the last year USDA kept track of such numbers.

Shatto said having enough customers willing to pay the higher price for a fresh product basically straight from the cow and other local food producers, and reaching them with the fewest routes possible, are keys for his bottom line.

“If you can do that correctly, you can make it work,” he said.

11/29/2017