At breakfast, we’d peel off the foil top and scoop out the cream, unless mum got to the bottle first and shook it up.
There are some olden day gems on Te Ara – The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, a site I enjoy looking up for its absolute New Zealandness.
This encyclopaedia states milk was delivered to houses in NZ cities and towns until the mid 1990s when it gradually stopped. No surprise, really, that the milkman wasn’t in such great demand once supermarkets were authorised to act as milk vendors in 1987.
By the late 1980s glass milk bottles had been replaced by cartons.
Now it’s 2018 and the milkman is making a comeback in big cities around the world. From New York to London and just across the Tasman people are ordering milk to be delivered to their door straight from the dairy farm.
It’s an understatement to say I’m desperate to have the same service here in Auckland city. I’d go back to glass bottled milk in a heartbeat.
We buy at least eight litres of milk a week from the supermarket, in two litre plastic bottles. It takes up the whole bottom shelf of our fridge.
If I could buy glass bottled milk, I’d get two orders a week. Imagine the kids going to the letterbox or doorstep to collect the milk. The nostalgia.
I’d be willing to pay more than at the supermarket for the service (the going rate for boutique glass bottled milk is $4-$5 a litre, which is expensive, so I’d buy a bit less and I like the idea of re-using glass bottles rather than recycling plastic.
There are boutique milk suppliers bottling their liquid gold in glass – and a few shops in Auckland where I can buy milk in one litre glass bottles.
Waikato company Jersey Girl Organics produces organic and pasteurised A2 milk and it’s stocked in a few local shops – I tried it in a cafe recently and it’s deliciously smooth and creamy. It warranted two coffees in a row.
Jersey Girl Organics also has vending machines in Bay of Plenty, where customers can refill their own containers with the liquid gold. I like that idea but not as much as the milkman deliveries.
One company in the South Island delivers bottled milk to homes and it’s onto something good. Milk and More delivers nostalgia in a bottle, Nelson’s Oaklands milk, a pasteurised A2 milk from pampered cows. This isn’t new for Milk and More, it has been in the milk delivery business for 20 years but recently has seen a resurgence in orders.
Interestingly, reports from Britain suggest millennials are using glass milk bottles in a bid to cut down plastic waste after watching David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II and milkmen there are reporting a rise in orders.
That all goes to show I’m not alone in thinking now is the time for the milkman to make a comeback.
That said, despite the nostalgia, any return to milk deliveries will need to have a different approach from that of the 1980s.
Customers will want a bespoke service – from farms with pampered cows and honest provenance. This could include the ability to choose the type of milk and even the farm or herd it’s from.
I’d want my milkman to take orders by text or online and receive payment electronically then deliver to my doorstep. I probably wouldn’t want to deal with tokens and definitely not cash.
About now I’m wondering if I could ever afford such a service but if there was enough demand for milk delivery, prices could be reasonable rather than expensive.
The prospect of seeing my kids open a glass bottle of milk? Priceless.
