Is home delivery milk and bread viable now?

While this thread could apply to many cities and towns, Detroit is the place of my youth.

So many years ago, on the east side of the city near Balduck Park, my neighbors had food staples delivered by men in Divco trucks. [OK, why would anyone want to staple food together?]

Our milkman was Mr. Schewe who first delivered Schwitzer's milk and then Wilson's Dairy products - half and half, cottage cheese, ice cream, even eggs. We had Awrey's bread, rolls, and coffe cakes delivered, too.

Bulletmagnet's family, our next-door neighbors, had Borden's delivered. The neighbor on the other side had Twin Pines and the neighbor next to them had Rosebud.

As I wax nostolgic, it seemed to me that the sight of these men in the neighborhood meant everything was all right with the world.

I haven't seen anything like home delivery in a very long time. Could someone today establish a home delivery milk route and make a living at it?

Calder's has home delivery downriver, I recently saw a job posting for a trainee driver. I did wonder about the long-term prospects though.:confused:

Oberweis seems to have it for Farmington, Royal Oak, and Clawson [[not Ferndale, Detroit, or Southfield, though)......Milk in glass bottles 2.99-3.59 a half gallon plus a $2.99 delivery charge.....

I'm afraid the "Worry free, home delivery" days are long gone. Cost for insurance to deliver in Detroit alone would be prohibitive.

If people ever get too scared to leave their houses or say an older person works days but uses only public transportation, he or she may not find it easy to shop.

Detroit for those reasons might actually have some potential for a grocery delivery system. Perhaps some enterprising person can start such a business.

I've always thought there was a need and potential business in home delivery of such staples. It was extremely popular in my youth, in fact, I don't remember even one house that didn't have home delivery in my neighborhood.

As time passed, and supermarkets took over, shopping became an outing, and much less a drudgery, since you could get everything in one stop, and not have to go to different stores for things, i.e. butcher, cheese shop, bread, etc.

We had Awrey's and Silvercup baked goods delivered, and Twin Pines milk products.

I haven't thought of this in years, but didn't Twin Pines have a logo that featured a strange looking clown with a cone on it's head? I remember being frightened by the image as a child. My sister thinks his name was "Milky", however I can't confirm that.

Is Twin Pines still in business?

I used to work at Calder's in '88-'89 making ice cream. I have a ton of old labeled milk bottles from City Dairy, Wayne Creamery, Wilson's, even one from the Michigan State Dairy Dept. Every time I saw an interesting one in the cooler I'd grab it and keep the bottle. My next door neighbor had a Twin Pines route in the 60s-70s. I miss those days.

I think home delivery of grocery orders, not limited to milk and bread, would be much more viable.

We had a Rosebud milkman, and baked goods delivered by the Mills Bakery man. Closest thing to this now would be Schwan's home delivery of frozen foods. I don't know if any grocery stores in the Detroit area do it, but there is at least one here in rural Minnesota that lets you order online and either pick it up, or within about 15 miles they will deliver...for a small fee. I wish they delivered 35 miles out...I'd jump at the chance for home delivery...THEY would carry the bags in. We shop once a month and only buy things like milk, bread, and eggs in between.

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Originally Posted by rooms222

Oberweis seems to have it for Farmington, Royal Oak, and Clawson [[not Ferndale, Detroit, or Southfield, though)......Milk in glass bottles 2.99-3.59 a half gallon plus a $2.99 delivery charge.....

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The real problem is the delivery charge relative to the item price. With the size of a full grocery order the fee could be higher but still be acceptable. Perhaps a minimum flat rate for small orders then a percentage of the order for larger orders would work. Online payment would cut down the risk of payment issues, though obviously it could not be the only option.

I was rescued from a house fire by a milkman doing his route.

I don't know why I kept it but somewhere in a box I still have my Milky the Clown fan club button

When I lived in VA and in PA, both sets of my grandparents had home delivery of groceries. They would call the store and order what they wanted in the morning and by afternoon the delivery was made. Neither one of my grandpas owned a car. You walked when you needed to get someplace. If you had to go some distance, maybe a neighbor was going that way and they'd give you a ride.

I remember walking into town many, many times with my VA grandparents. We'd go in the store and order groceries. Go to the dry goods store and pick out material or whatever was needed. Go to the shoe store, dress shop, etc. Everything got delivered. I'm sure there was a nominal fee for this, but I have no idea what it was.

Living in Essex County, we have home delivery from most of the drug stores. Anything they sell, they'll deliver. Our drug store does not charge a fee, but we very seldom use them for home delivery. Mr. Erie is always making a quick trip into town for something so he picks up our prescriptions and whatnot.

Oberweis does have a range of groceries, for the same delivery fee.....

Twin Pines no longer delivers, However I still see the plant on Greenfield with the logo out in front, along with another dairy. Possibly they only serve reataurants and comercial business now??
It was great to see a fully restored Divco Twin Pines truck at last year's Woodward Dream Cruise. It was also at this year's Autorama. Real nice job on the truck.
There use to be all kinds of delivery services back in the 50's. Milk bread, eggs, baked goods, etc. Those days are gone I am afraid.
There must have been at least a dozen diferent dairy's delivering milk back then.
Can we name them all starting with Twin Pines, Browns,Sealtest, United Dairies, Brinkley,Ira Wilson and Sons, Bordens,Foremost, Oberweis ??

Fresh Direct operates in many NYC neighborhoods. NYC has the density that I think is required in order for this service to work. Also, many buildings have doormen who can accept deliveries when the resident is no at home.

http://www.freshdirect.com/index.jsp

It isn't a density issue as much as it is a profit margin issue. Pizza places deliver all the time.

According to their commercial, Oakland Press and Macomb Daily seem to be attempting to fill the home newspaper delivery vacuum. Maybe the economy is creating a greater demand for home delivery in general?

Milky the Clown was face of Twin Pines dairy on Channel 4. He had a live weekend show for years.

We also had a vegetable truck that made the circuit of our neighborhood. We had bread from Silvercup, and Borden's dairy, too. Now, my milk chute is sealed on the outside, filled with insulation, and plastered over on the inside.

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Originally Posted by Parkguy

We also had a vegetable truck that made the circuit of our neighborhood. We had bread from Silvercup, and Borden's dairy, too. Now, my milk chute is sealed on the outside, filled with insulation, and plastered over on the inside.

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Ah, such a waste. Ours is sided over on the outside but holds keys, gardening gloves, hand clippers, and the occasional trowel on the inside. [[It's next to the stairs leading to the back door.)

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Originally Posted by lilpup

Ah, such a waste. Ours is sided over on the outside but holds keys, gardening gloves, hand clippers, and the occasional trowel on the inside. [[It's next to the stairs leading to the back door.)

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Hah, yeah. As a kid, I was fascinated by milk chutes on houses [[my house was one of the few in the neighborhood that was built without one, since the side of the house facing the driveway was all bedrooms), and couldn't for the life of me understand why my neighbors kept sealing them shut. I still think they're pretty cool, but I think I have a slightly better handle on the concept of people breaking into houses and stealing stuff than I did then. :)

When I delivered newspapers as a kid some of the people who still had chutes open to the outside wanted their papers left in them rather than sitting on the porch.

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Originally Posted by Jimaz

According to their commercial, Oakland Press and Macomb Daily seem to be attempting to fill the home newspaper delivery vacuum. Maybe the economy is creating a greater demand for home delivery in general?

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Their parent company is bankrupt, so let's see how long it lasts.

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Originally Posted by Parkguy

We also had a vegetable truck that made the circuit of our neighborhood.

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In the Balduck Park area that would be the produce truck of Tom Lappicola [[a Marseilles St. resident). Back in the 1960's he used to drive down the streets around Balduck Park and 48224 area.

I can still hear his loudspeaker in the recesses of my brain.... "strawberries, strawberries... 3 quarts for a dollar..."

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Originally Posted by Gistok

In the Balduck Park area that would be the produce truck of Tom Lappicola [[a Marseilles St. resident). Back in the 1960's he used to drive down the streets around Balduck Park and 48224 area.

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I went to school with Tom's son? - Bob Lappicola- they lived in Grosse Pointe at that time.

They still had the milkman back in the 70,s on my block in the burbs. I cannot recall seeing the milkman on either one of my Grandparents streets during that time. I could tell who got their milk delivered because they had galvanized steel boxes on their porches then.If the customer is willing to pay for the milk delivery then it must be viable enough to keep the service as Calders does.When the "honeymooners" were living under my roof, The "son in law" and I wished that the milkman was still around. Went through almost a gallon a day.

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Originally Posted by grumpyoldlady

. . . here in rural Minnesota .

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grumpy, you mentioned rural Minnesota. I know it's a big place but, the mother of my Spring Garden bride of 33 years was born and raised in Avon, MN [somewhere very near Lake Wobegon :) ]. Are you anywhere near there?

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Originally Posted by diver1369

I was rescued from a house fire by a milkman doing his route.

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That is a tantalzing lead-in. Sounds like quite a story. Care to share the details?

We still had egg delivery every Saturday well into the mid 1990's in our neighborhood at 8 Mile and Livernois. It is still odd for me to buy eggs at the store. Bud had been the delivery guy for probably 50+ years. The best part wasn't the at-your-door service; it was the eggs-- the freshest eggs you would get if you didn't have your own chickens. The fruit and vegetable trucks still showed up occasionally, too, until about 1998.

Turkeycall......We're roughly 75 miles northwest of Avon. Northwest of Alexandria and east of Fergus Falls. Not too far off of I-94.

One of the reasons home delivery was viable back in the 50's and 60's was that most women were stay at home moms, and most families only had one car. So, during the week, when dad was at work, mom needed some way to get fresh dairy and baked goods into the house without asking her husband to stop on the way home. With the advent of more women working outside, it wasn't such an issue to do the grocery shopping on the way home from work instead of on the weekend. Also, most families, even if the mother is stay at home have 2 vehicles now, so home delivery isn't much of an issue.

I don't think home delivery of anything in Detroit is viable...the delivery people would be frequent targets for robbery or worse. I wonder how many homes still have open and usable "milk chutes" on the side of the house? It was an easy way to get in if you locked yourself out...just find a skinny kid to crawl through and open the door. Our house didn't have a milk chute...we had a metal insulated box that sat by the side door. Have a friend that had a milk chute that opened into a broom closet. She heard thumping and bumping in there and opened it and her cat jumped out carrying a live rabbit! Now days, it might be a burglar doing the thumping and bumping.

I would be interested in the Wayne creamery bottles.

In the 40s and 50s, we had home delivery [[Borden's). Some of the neighbors had Sealtest and for a long time, Sealtest used horsedrawn carts for delivery. We also had the Mills Bakery delivery man and the two Italians with the open backed truck full of fruits and vegetables.

The supermarkets killed home delivery. In 1961, they deliverymen and their wives did a protest at a Great Scott, filling up baskets with milk and then just leaving them in the aisles. Home delivery just couldn't compete pricewise with the discount supermarkets.

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Originally Posted by Bearinabox

Hah, yeah. As a kid, I was fascinated by milk chutes on houses [[my house was one of the few in the neighborhood that was built without one, since the side of the house facing the driveway was all bedrooms), and couldn't for the life of me understand why my neighbors kept sealing them shut. I still think they're pretty cool, but I think I have a slightly better handle on the concept of people breaking into houses and stealing stuff than I did then. :)

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This is why milk delivery will never work again - you can't do it without a milk chute!!!! LOL I used to crawl through ours when I forgot my house key, man my dad would get all over me for that. He would tape it up from the inside so the cold would not get in and I would ruin his awesome tape job. hehehe

Anyway - when I was in England a couple years ago [[my husband is British), people still have home milk delivery there. I loved seeing all the little white bottles of milk sitting on the front stoop - made me feel safe for some weird reason. I guess if you can trust your neighbors to not mess with your milk it can't be that bad of a place. Oh - and this was NOT in London or some big city, it was in rural little villages. Can't wait to get back there again. Mmmmmm. :)

Yes, it does, along with other groceries and countless other items. I believe the Pharmacy in Brush/Cass Park already does prescription deliveries.

There is a tradeoff between density and price--if you have more deliveries in a given area, you don't have to charge as much per delivery. But the idea that you couldn't do home deliveries in Detroit at all is contrary to reality--UPS delivers stuff in the city all the time--even food.

Food deliveries make sense for people who can afford to pay to save time, and for affluent shut-ins. I don't know how many of either of those are around in the city.

Oberweis offers home delivery of milk and other groceries in portions of the metro area.
http://www.oberweis.com/web/homedelivery.asp

Peapod makes it work in a number of other metros.

My neighbor here in Grosse Pointe gets weekly delivery. Schwan's or Schwietzer's or something similar.

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Originally Posted by MikeM

My neighbor here in Grosse Pointe gets weekly delivery. Schwan's or Schwietzer's or something similar.

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Schwann's is mostly frozen food.

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Originally Posted by Neilr

Fresh Direct operates in many NYC neighborhoods. NYC has the density that I think is required in order for this service to work. Also, many buildings have doormen who can accept deliveries when the resident is no at home.

http://www.freshdirect.com/index.jsp

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I don't think the density of NYC has much to do with it [[they service the NY metropolitan area). Fresh Direct is an online grocer, so it would operate pretty much the same as any delivery service.

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Originally Posted by jcole

Schwann's is mostly frozen food.

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Okay; the cow on the truck made me think it was dairy.

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Originally Posted by lilpup

I think home delivery of grocery orders, not limited to milk and bread, would be much more viable.

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I've been looking for something like that for some time.
In 1990 my cousin used to have milk,cheese,eggs,pastry,and such delivered to her home. I can't remember the name of the company that delivered though.
The last store I know of to have home delivery in Detroit was a store on Woodward in HP. It was a small convience/party store so selection was limited but they delivered things like milk,bread,etc.
It came in handy when I didn't feel like going out for smaller things I'd forgotten at the market.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

There is a tradeoff between density and price--if you have more deliveries in a given area, you don't have to charge as much per delivery. But the idea that you couldn't do home deliveries in Detroit at all is contrary to reality--UPS delivers stuff in the city all the time--even food.

Food deliveries make sense for people who can afford to pay to save time, and for affluent shut-ins. I don't know how many of either of those are around in the city.

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That makes sense in theory, but in reality it's only the small condos, row houses, duplexes, and the like that are the least time consuming and expensive. Suburban areas take twice as long because of the winding roads and high traffic, among other reasons. High rises and skyscrapers are even more time consuming than the others because it can take awhile to park, sign in, and wait to get in an elevator.

Some of our buildings can be excruciatingly slow. I have waited as long as ten minutes for elevators in and around Detroit.

Richards farm in Essex County Windsor bakes his own bread with his own field grown wheat, mills it on site and delivers it to customers along with other flour for baking. Check him out at the burgeoning Downtown Windsor Market now into it's second year.

http://www.downtownfarmersmarket.ca/

What was delivered to the homes with the 1' x 1' metal doors? I've noticed these in alot of homes in the suburbs that look like 50's 60's homes. Was it the milk chute? Did it open to the inside of the home?

We had orange juice delivered to our house until the mid-70's. I recall a vegetable truck coming by every so often until at least the early-80's.

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Originally Posted by jcole

Schwann's is mostly frozen food.

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Another neighbor just got a delivery from Old Fashioned Country Dairy.