Doorstop deliveries on the rise for milk round couple

A combination of the ‘David Attenborough effect’ and coronavirus restrictions has added even greater momentum to the business they started six years ago.

Delivering to villages around Harrogate and with a huge, growing milk round in the town itself, Robert and Jasmine saw their initial 275 clients grow to 530 when TV’s Blue Planet II was shown and in the past four weeks they have seen phenomenal growth to 730 as people either rediscover the benefits of having their milk delivered, or didn’t know such a service existed.

The couple married in Gretna Green on a Friday afternoon so that they could fit it in with their delivery schedule, with Jasmine wearing an original 1920s milk maid dress altered by a seamstress, one of their doorstep customers.

They travelled there in a milk float with a top speed of 50mph and proved as much a hit with the wedding village’s tourists as they are with their customers.

“It’s just gone berserk since coronavirus,” says Jasmine. “Robert once said when we got to 500 clients that would be great. Now we’re at over 700 and maybe we will get to 800.

“It’s all a bit unbelievable. We’ve just recently modified our Toyota Hilux so that we can get more 20-bottle crates flat on what is now more of a flatbed truck.

“We used to get 14, we can now get 24. It means lifting is now a lot easier. In this job most milkmen end up having hip replacements. We’re trying to avoid that by having the right equipment.”

“On Good Friday morning we delivered 800 bottles of semi skimmed, 300 bottles of pasteurised or skimmed milk, and lots of the other items including organic milk, soya milk, orange juice, yoghurts, eggs, cream and wonderful honey from a local producer,” says Robert.

“Our customers really are finding out how useful it is to have doorstep delivery, not just of milk but of all these other products.

“The amount of eggs we are selling this week has gone up by four times the amount we were doing a few weeks ago. We are now ordering 400 boxes of six eggs. Everything else is on the up too.

“Doing what we do is definitely a lifestyle choice It’s not for everybody, and other milkmen tell us they still haven’t got used to it after 40 years of doing it, but we love our job and it is peaceful driving at the time of day we are out.

“The sunrises we see are glorious, the dawn choruses make it a wonderful life and doing the job together is what makes all the difference.

“We deliver between midnight and 6 o’clock and currently up to 8 o’clock with the way things have gone.

“We know that, come summer or when the restrictions are lifted, a lot that have come in the last few weeks might leave us,” says Jasmine.

“But at the moment, while we are all in lockdown, we are just trying to do the best we can for everyone.

“I had to turn down a prospective new client the other day, but he wasn’t even close to being in our area. That tells you there is even greater potential not just for us, but for many more new milkmen and women to set up and do what we are doing.’

“We have a hardcore of customers who will stay with us come rise or come shine and we may get more like that now.

“People who have always had their milk delivered will stay, some of those who used to have their milk delivered and who have now returned because they realise the benefits of it being there when they wake up will hopefully stay and the ‘Save the planet’ customers will remain.

“Our 4,000 glass bottles we deliver every week is saving 2,000 plastic cartons being sent to the oceans. 95 per cent of the milk we deliver is in glass.”

For their first three and a half years, Robert and Jasmine delivered six days per week but one of the ways in which today’s milkmen and women have moved on, it seems, is by working smarter.

“We changed our deliveries to twice per week wherever we deliver,” says Jasmine.

“We’ve also moved with the times on payment too, as the traditional ways of the milkman collecting on a different day in early evening would now take too long, especially when people are used to paying by BACS or leaving a cheque with their empties.”

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor