Our milkman's called John Mills. He delivers a daily pint of semi-skimmed milk and a weekly pint of pink grapefruit juice. The milk costs 54p per pint and the juice 91p per pint. We could buy our milk from our local Tescos where it is considerably cheaper at 42p per pint. However for various reasons we have decided to stick with John. It gives him a job, saves us from having to venture out in the mornings, is fresh, local and flexible and uses electric powered floats and recycled glass bottles instead of plastic cartons. While researching for this post today I discovered that I can amend/cancel my order online and have a sack of compost delivered along with my daily pinta!
Doorstep deliveries have declined dramatically over the last couple of decades. According to DEFRA only 7% of milk is delivered to our doorsteps today, compared to 30% in 1984. 65% of milk is bought from supermarkets and 23% from convenience stores. In order to boost sales milkmen have set up a website (http://www.findmeamilkman.net/) which allows visitors to discover whether their address is covered by a milk round.
The truth is that we do not buy all our milk from John. The girls drink 2-3 pints of full fat milk a day, which we buy in 4 litre cartons from a supermarket. We also have 2 litres delivered by Riverford along with our organic fruit and veg box. We can't(?) afford to spend £2 per day on milk so we compromise. That's life, I guess.
Gosh, what a lot of milk you get through! That's having teenage girls at home, I suppose. We have our milk from Dairy Crest too, though I don't know the milkman's name (maybe the same one), but we only have four pints per week, which we occasionally have to supplement. It sold itself to me on the basis of glass bottles as well. In our previous home we cancelled the milk delivery after it started arriving between 11pm and midnight and I found it was going off very quickly...
ReplyDeleteI love having milk delivered. The best thing I find is that it saves me money in the long run despite the extra cost. One less thing to nip out to the corner shop for, where I would spend extra money in get lots of things I didn't need. ;-D
ReplyDeleteI have my milk delivered as well, I get 3 pints of full cream and 3 pints of semi skim both organic and also a pack of butter delivered weekly.I am looking at the fruit juice as well.
ReplyDeleteFor me the convenience outweighs the price as I have a 3 mile round trip to the nearest PO/cornershop or a 13 mile round trip to the nearest supermarket.
I do buy extra milk when using the supermarket but I freeze this so it can be fetched from the freezer as needed (defrosts within 24 hours in the fridge).
Hiya Maisie. Thanks for dropping in and leaving a comment.
ReplyDeleteI have dropped in on you on several occasions and read you with interest. We appear to be travelling in the same direction. In fact I'm heartened by how many of us there are, all over the country and indeed the world.