I never understood why milk was delivered to my house as a kid. This was so random
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Before refrigeration and pasteurization became so widespread milk would spoil very fast. However, people living in cities (miles and miles away from any cows) still wanted fresh milk for cooking and drinking… so what to do?
Well, some folks figured out that they could buy a bunch of milk fresh from dairy farms out of town and bring it directly to customers in their homes that very same day! That way, the fresh milk gets to every customer right away instead of sitting in a supermarket and spoiling if nobody buys it all quickly enough. So, companies started doing these “milk runs” where they’d get a bunch of fresh milk and then deliver it all directly to their customers – essentially a “milk subscription” version of “modern” delivery services like ButcherBox’s “meat subscription” service or HelloFresh’s “meal subscription” services.
Eventually, though, widespread refrigeration and pasteurization meant that a carton of milk could sit on a refrigerated supermarket shelf for almost 2-weeks before going bad, and so folks didn’t *need* to use a subscription delivery service to get milk anymore. So the era of the common “milkman” was mostly over – after having grown to roughly 29.7% of US consumers having their milk delivered in 1963, down to 6.9% by 1975, to 0.4% by 2005.
But from those numbers you can see that the idea didn’t ever completely die out. In a few places the practice continued to exist simply because there were enough customers who wanted the service in some big city to keep *one* milkman in business even if *most* folks wanted to buy milk at the supermarket. In other places, folks wanting “healthier” or more “farm fresh” produce might have signed up for some sort of farm-to-table subscription for fresh/raw/unpasteurized milk or whatever.
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