By Janey M. Rifkin

You’d have to have lived a long time to remember when the morning milk delivery was on your doorstep. But what’s that saying? – “If you milk delivery was on your doorstep. But what’s that saying? – “If you live long enough, everything old is new again.”

So, back in Bridgeport, Connecticut and probably elsewhere as well, COVID has rekindled delivery of the dairy! Doug Wade, Jr., President of Wade’s Dairy in Connecticut, inherited the business from his father, who home delivered milk in glass bottles for near a century.

It just got to be too old fashioned; customers had dwindled, wooed by grocery stores offering cheaper milk that kept longer. Women had gone off to work, leaving no one home to accept deliveries.

By 1992, Wade Dairy shut down home delivery. Now the coronavirus has resurrected that last issue. Everyone is home now. Meanwhile, many of the clients that Wade’s had pivoted to serve – restaurants, schools, corporate dining facilities – are closed.

“Never in a million years would I have thought home delivery would come back like this,” said Doug Wade Jr., age 66. Time to get creative, he thought, and indeed he did. In April, he started a service that charges a $10 fee in exchange for crates filled with everything from eggs to cheese to yogurt placed on doorsteps. More than 250 customers from 25 towns signed up.

“At its peak, the dairy had more than 3,000 home delivery customers,” Wade commented. But by the end of the 20th century, the dairy had evolved into a processing plant, pasteurizing milk from local farms, managing innovations, 80 employees, including 40 drivers. “The pandemic urely jolted the businesses back into action,” said Wade. Wade worries about how restaurant customers will survive. His delivery business model could expire when normal life returns. But he is driven by nostalgia too. He recently purchased a vintage hand-cranked cream separator. And despite his age and asthma, he can’t keep away from his office.

“I probably shouldn’t be coming into work, but you know, this is my life,” he said. I’m a milkman!

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Janey Rifkin is a syndicated writer. This article appeared in the Warner Center News. A community paper in the West San Fernando Valley, California.