Got Milk? Depends on What You Mean…

For hundreds of years Americans almost exclusively drank cow’s milk. In the 1990’s, that all changed.

Commercial milk sales in America started in Colonial times[1]. Agriculture was king, including a large contingent of dairy farmers with Northern European roots. These recent settlers had generations of experience in their home countries selling cream, cheese, butter, and other milk-related products to fellow villagers—farm-to-table at its most basic.

They brought those traditions with them over to the U.S., though the retailing of dairy products was different from the start, at least through the first half of the 20^th Century. The consumer did not go out for milk products; milk products came to the consumer, a reversal in course driven by milk’s perishability. Though metal and glass containers were developed to partially control the temperature of contents, markets remained very local; very small.

By the 1920s, commercial refrigeration was practical enough that a dairy business might consider investing in refrigerated transport. Yet the tech remained rare and expensive for most American households[2]. These circumstances ushered in the Golden Age of Milk Delivery, at least until operators could afford to manage expansive refrigeration capabilities at their bricks-and-mortar stores. That’s when consumers began buying milk with their other groceries, and milk delivery soon became part of the American past.

For an industry whose technology was evolving in leaps and bounds, the dairy industry’s basic product remained remarkably unchanged for hundreds of years. From the day Dutch settlers first brought their cows in from pasture, Americans drank creamy white cow’s milk with few exceptions and variations. There were always options to add a little powder or syrup or something else to mix things up, but the market was plain vanilla, so to speak, for the most part.

Then the 1990s happened. The search for healthy drink alternatives and the blending of international food cultures thanks to the internet helped change the definition of milk in the consumer’s mind. Here are some examples.

Plant-Based Milk. Soy milk was the first breakthrough alternative milk in the commercial sense. A legion of plant-based offerings followed: almond milk and oat milk being the most visible, cashew, rice, hemp, pea, and macadamia milk also there if you do a little digging. And honestly, plant-based alternatives are only part of the market.

Golden Milk. This is, indeed, cow’s milk, and it is, indeed, golden. It gets its color from powdered turmeric, a plant in the ginger family, which is combined into the liquid. Representative of the health benefits claimed by a new generation of milk products, golden milk is said to be anti-inflammatory, antioxidant-rich, and supportive of joint health and immunity.

Matcha Milk. It may not be golden, but matcha milk’s vibrant green color still manages to catch the eye. The hue from a powder made of specially grown and processed tea leaves—the matcha that gives the drink its name. Japanese in origin, it’s another favorite among health-conscious consumers who favor it for high levels of antioxidants, promotion of increased metabolism, and enhanced focus and energy without jitters.

Lactose-Free Milk. Lactose is a type of sugar that’s naturally found in cow’s milk and dairy products, but some people don’t produce the enzyme needed to break it down in the body. For lactose intolerant milk-lovers, a lactose-free version is created by adding additional enzymes to neutralize their potential effect on the person drinking it.

Camel Milk. Okay, this may not be on the shelves of your local store, but the international profile of camel milk is on the rise. There are nutritional reasons: it is rich in protein, and compared to cow’s milk, lower in fat and lactose, with three times the Vitamin C. It is also being more efficiently packaged and distributed by the companies who produce it in the Middle East and Africa, and is marketed partially through international food expos and trade shows which has helped raise awareness within the States.

Given the variety of today’s milk products, it should not be surprising to find they come in an equal variety of packages: bottles, cans, jugs, squeeze boxes; sometimes single, sometimes combined into a multi-pack. You could even buy it in bags for 40 years if you went to the right place.

As your inventory evolves over time driven by consumer demand, so should your ability to manage and track it, which is where SSCS Computerized Daily Book software comes in. Our item-based inventory system empowers you to analyze and follow item behavior as it affects your profit, not after, keeping you up on subtle changes to stock performance that you might have otherwise missed. Give us a call at (800) 972-7727 and we’ll show you how to milk the most profit out of your c-store using technology.

[1] Approximately 1607–1776.

[2] Up to $6,000 in today’s money for a household refrigerator.