To think the milkman is expensive??

[MrsKwazi]

Just had my latest invoice from the milkman. I pay £1.35 for a pint of full cream organic milk. At sainsbury’s a 4 pint yeo valley organic full cream costs £2. That is a massive difference! Does the farmer get more money from the milkman?

It was a kind of door step sign up, a guy cold called the neighbourhood. But aibu to cancel my deliveries asap? The only thing that makes me feel a bit better it the glass vs plastic.

Is there anything written on the bottles? If so, see what's on your bottles and then research that company. Is it a farm or a bottling plant? Where do they buy from? Maybe call the milk delivery company and ask if it's not obvious.

If the delivery company/dairy/bottling plant is buying milk from e.g. Arla, it's likely that the farmers are getting the same as a supermarket will pay. However, if the milkmen buy from a farm, or use an intermediary that buys local the farmer will get more. Ultimately regardless of where the milk is from you’re always going to pay a premium for somebody being employed to coordinate purchases and deliveries, somebody employed to deliver it to your door, and the infrastructure for glass bottling and cleansing over disposable plastic.

Source: Reddit.

Do milkman services pay farmers more? : r/manchester (reddit.com)

This is why I held off getting a milkman for years. A local farm started doing it so I’m happy to pay now as I know the money is all going directly to the farmer (from cows that I regularly run past!)

Farmers get paid on their contract so it depends where your milkman is getting his milk from.

You could always ask him where he gets it from or look it up somehow? It's great that you want to support dairy farmers by paying a proper price! Sometimes milk is cheaper than water, I remember once it got to 11p a litre and in shops they of course sold it for way more. At the moment organic is at 36p a litre on the farm I'm on I believe

Our milk is from Hanover diaries. The welfare bit on their website is letters from the farms talking about red tractor standards and grazing vs housing in winter. Can’t really see anything about pricing, looks like they buy from local co-ops. There is a diary local to us that has a calf at foot system. I might give them a go instead. Unpasteurised milk though.

Milkman deliveries have always been more expensive than the supermarket. Which is why almost no-one uses them any more. Along with deliveries not always being convenient, eg delivered after people go to work so on the doorstep all day to go off/get stolen.

Buying in pints vs 4 pints also costs a lot more. Eg in Sainsburys, a single pint of organic semi skimmed milk, so the nearest comparator, is £1, so the price gap is a lot lower.

Does your milkman also do 4 pint cartons so you can possibly buy at a lower cost per pint from him? Although it will obviously come in a plastic bottle.

But per type of milk, the farmers probably get the same price for the same type of milk from the same buyer, and then the other differences in cost/profit will be taken by the bottlers, distributors and retailers.

At one time, back in the 60s/70s milk was a similar price delivered or from the shops, and virtually everyone had their milk delivered in recyclable glass bottles, by electric vehicles. Then the supermarkets weilded their buying power and squeezed the price lower and lower as they were saving the dairies the cost of distribution. More people also had a fridge, so it was less important to have fresh milk everyday. So that's where we are today, you are not being ripped off by the milkman, it is just expensive to offer the service.