Photos by Adam DeTour

Blending entrepreneurship with a touch of nostalgia, local delivery services in Eastern and Central Massachusetts are delivering a year-round bounty of locally raised products right to the doors of their customers. Your grandparents probably reminisce about the milkman who dropped off bottles of milk and cream or the local grocer who delivered a weekly order. Today those local delivery trucks are likely to bring fresh salad greens, homemade pasta, and steaks or milk from cows raised in New England.

Home delivery is a way for businesses to connect with customers who appreciate local food but can’t always make it to farmers markets. It’s also another income stream for beleaguered dairy farmers. In Massachusetts, there are only 117 dairy farms still in business, less than half as many as the 272 farms in operation 20 years ago.

Most dairy farms still in business sell the majority of their milk to wholesale customers like supermarkets, schools, restaurants and other institutions. Some, though, have a loyal base of folks who value the convenience of home delivery and the taste of milk in a glass bottle. And an increasing number of new customers are willing to pay a premium for it.

SHAW FARM

“My great-grandfather delivered milk in a horse-drawn wagon; it wasn’t a high-end service,” says Warren Shaw, owner of Shaw Farm in Dracut. Today’s home delivery customer “is more affluent and looking for a unique service,” he adds. For his customers, that includes getting the only certified organic milk produced and bottled in Eastern Massachusetts.

Only a small percentage of Shaw Farm’s milk deliveries go to its residential customers in the Merrimack Valley. The 112-year-old business, one of the oldest continually operating dairies in the state, focuses on wholesale customers including Whole Foods, Verrill Farms in Concord and Wilson Farms in Lexington.

Over the last decade Shaw Farm expanded home-delivered product offerings with bakery items from its onsite store as well as honey from its hives and meat from its own cows and pigs. The farm’s home delivery service now includes an array of other local brands as well.

Shaw Farm’s home delivery customers pay a $6.25 delivery fee for orders of $10 or less, but the fee goes down to $4.25 if they spend $15 or more.

CRESCENT RIDGE

Residential customers of Crescent Ridge have been getting weekly deliveries of milk in glass bottles since 1932. “We deliver to a lot of elders,” says Mark Parrish, third-generation owner of the farm located in Sharon. “And having a selection of local products is a lifeline for some of them.”

There’s a $15 minimum charge for Crescent Ridge’s “Farm to Fridge” service, which includes a $4.00 delivery charge. The dairy’s delivery area includes a wide swath from Norwell in the east, the Greater Boston area and out to Marlborough, just shy of Route 85.

Every week Crescent Ridge bottles 2,000 gallons of milk and makes 4,500 deliveries, most to wholesale customers. Home deliveries represent a small, but steady niche.

A few years ago, the Parrish family added beef and pork from its own herds to the list of products available for home delivery. After Crescent Ridge opened a dairy bar at the Boston Public Market, it expanded local product offerings to home delivery customers by partnering with several food businesses there.

Since adding local products to its home delivery of milk, “Our average order has grown by 15% to 16%; that’s tremendous,” Parrish says.

GIBSON’S DAIRY FARMS

The addition of local produce and meats is attracting new home delivery customers to a 97-year-old Worcester area dairy. In 1923, when Frank Gibson’s grandfather started delivering milk from his farm in Worcester, there were 52 dairies operating in the area. Today, Gibson’s Dairy Farms is the only one still in business, although the milk now comes from farms in Eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

In Worcester, the dairy is probably best known for its on-site Gibby’s Ice Cream Barn, where you can choose from 60 flavors of homemade ice cream. Gibson’s main business is wholesale supply of dairy, meat, produce and grocery items to area schools, restaurants, delis and cafés. With distribution centers in Worcester and Sterling, the dairy is looking to expand home deliveries in the Route 2 corridor including Acton, Lexington and Concord.

“We try to find things that are unique,” Gibson says. “We’re finding that new customers buy a lot more items than our traditional milk customers.”

One of the challenges to home delivery is finding drivers who meet the standards of those milkmen in the past. “Our drivers get to know their customers; they’re like members of the family,” Gibson says. “We had an employee with us for 50 years whose customers gave him keys to their homes. He’d let himself in and put the milk in the refrigerator.” Today’s drivers leave milk outside in a cooler, Gibson adds.

RAGGED HILL DAIRY

A fondness for the milk truck he used to load when working for a Worcester dairy some 20 years ago led Michael Sweeney to launch a one-man delivery service in the Brookfield area of Worcester County. Sweeney says his Ragged Hill Dairy Home Delivery Service serves 185 customers in 11 towns.

Once a week Sweeney drives his 26-year-old milk truck to Hatchland Dairy in Haverhill, New Hampshire, to pick up milk. He delivers the freshly bottled milk, along with an assortment of products from area farms, four days every week. The minimum cost is $12, which includes a $3 delivery fee.

“I’m trying to keep prices at a level that’s affordable for everyone,” Sweeney says, “and I want to help the local farmers in our area.”

His biggest challenge is juggling his customers’ requests for products with availability from his small farm suppliers. “I’m at the mercy of the farmers,” Sweeney says. “They sell me what they can, but they aren’t set up to give me an unlimited supply.”

FARMER AT THE DOOR

Coming at home delivery of local products from a slightly different angle is Farmer at the Door in Warren, Massachusetts. The business was founded by Lauren Noone, a self-proclaimed foodie and mother of two young children, who is “very conscious of what we eat,” she says.

Noone’s delivery service features some elements of a buyers’ club. Farmer at the Door seasonal members pay a small fee that gives them access to more products and discounts not available to regular customers. Both groups pay a flat $10 delivery fee. Over the past year Noone has grown her membership base to almost 50 customers.

Farmer at the Door chooses to partner with small farms. “I want to help the little guys survive,” Noone says. She visits every farm whose products she delivers, “So I can see what they are doing up close. It feels good to facilitate connections between farmers and customers.”

Her biggest challenge, Noone adds, “is wearing all the hats in the business.”

CENTRAL MASS LOCAVORE

Growing a home delivery service of local products from a hobby to a business was a challenge for Jacki and Tim Hildreth, co-founders of Central Mass Locavore. For the past five years they developed a customer base of about 150 in 23 towns in northern and Central Massachusetts.

Tim drove across the state and from Maine to Rhode Island picking up produce, meats, dairy, bakery items and a long list from jams and salsa to soap from more than 50 producers, most of them small farms. They turned their garage in Westminster into a small warehouse with freezers and an industrial-size refrigerator.

“We put 40,000 miles a year on our vans,” Tim says. At first, their parents and friends volunteered to help themsort products and load the vans. “We realized that wasn’t sustainable,” Jacki explains, so they hired two part-time employees to help with deliveries and the numerous administrative responsibilities.

“Our customers have been amazing,” Jacki adds, “but few people realize the amount of behind-the-scenes work it takes to get that delivery to them every week.”

Among the couple’s beginning goals were to increase awareness of local producers, support local agriculture and pay fair prices for their products. “I think we’ve succeeded in achieving that,” Jacki says.

For now, Tim and Jacki conclude, “We’ve maxed out what we can do from our garage.” It’s time to think about what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Jacki has been working part-time as a nurse; she wants to concentrate on her career and go to graduate school. “We’re still trying to figure out something that works for everyone but that doesn’t require so much time from us,” she says.

BOSTON ORGANICS

In the 18 years since he founded Boston Organics, Jeff Barry has overcome almost every obstacle a home delivery service can encounter. Even after growing the business from 13 customers in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville to 2,000 households and offices in 43 communities with a fleet of nine delivery vans and 18 employees, he says, “It’s challenging.”

Maintaining the standard of certified organic, for example, is often at odds with the goal of sourcing locally. In its first 10 years, Boston Organics increased the percentage of produce from local farms to 37%. Today, however, only 25% of fruits and vegetables on Boston Organics vans are from New England.

“There are very few, if any, certified organic orchards in New England,” Barry explains. As Boston Organics’ customer base grew to include offices, so did demand for organic fruit for break room snacking. Most of it comes from organic orchards in Washington and California.

Boston Organics’ home delivery customers select from boxes of organic produce ranging from $27 for one or two people to a $60 box that serves four to six. They can add organic grocery items such as milk and dairy products, tea, chocolate or popcorn.

Barry notes that another challenge to local companies is increasing competition from online meal kits and delivery services like Amazon and Instacart.

Drivers for local delivery services are employees or owners, “not contractors,” Barry notes. “They get paid time off and access to subsidized health insurance.”

Boston Organics is committed to a sustainable food delivery system, he adds, but that means the entire supply chain. “It’s important to consider how food is grown,” Barry says, “but also to ask if the people in the food system are being treated in healthy and humane ways.”

The delivery of local products directly to the consumer allows even the busiest of people to support local and sustainable while helping food delivery companies stay in business. If time prevents you from getting to the farmers market, consider having local delivered to your door. See websites below.

Note: Walden Local Meat delivers meat, fish and eggs up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from Maine to Long Island and everywhere in between. For a closer look at their unique delivery service from this issue, click here.

This story appeared in the Spring 2020 issue and was written before the outbreak of Covid-19 in the US. In the weeks since social distancing has become the norm, these delivery businesses have become more essential than ever and some are at capacity, not taking on new customers at this time. Check their individual websites for more information:

bostonorganics.com
crescentridge.com
farmeratthedoor.com
gibsonsdairy.com
raggedhilldairy.com
shawfarm.com