For decades, the common practice to receive milk was that you would have it delivered to your door by a milkman. They would be up in the early hours, heading out and about around the local area in their milk float, putting glass bottles of milk down for people to enjoy on their cereal, in the teas and coffees, or just in a big glass for refreshment. The proliferation of the supermarket soon put paid to the milkman, however, and they became a dying breed. Then Simon Mellin’s The Modern Milkman came along and turned the industry on its head, introducing the milkman back to communities like Guildford.
Bringing Back the Milkman
It was in 2018 that Simon Mellin was watching an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II. In it, the famous documentary was talking about the dangers that plastic waste was causing the planet, and Mellin realised that there was something, however small, that he could do. Alongside some friends, he bought a milk round and began to drop milk off to people in glass bottles, picking them back up to reuse them in the future. He soon realised that this was an industry primed to be disrupted by the use of technology.
With the milkman having gone from serving around 85% of households in the 1970s and 1980s, that figure has dropped to about 3% nowadays. In the eyes of many, that is just a sign of the times. As far as Mellin is concerned, however, it is a market just waiting to be exploited. Having grown up on a farm in Lancashire, Mellin knew that there was room for improvement in the milk-delivery business and so decided to launch The Modern Milkman, promising people milk deliveries to their doorstep the morning after placing an order.
How the Company Took Off
Although the idea behind The Modern Milkman might be a good one, it is still one that required a little bit of fortune to move from being the brainchild of a lad from Lancashire to something able to deliver milk to homes around Guildford and beyond. In 2019, with the United Kingdom gearing up for what felt like yet another General Election, Boris Johnson, vying to become Prime Minister, got up in the early hours to join Mellin on his rounds. A day later, the bumbling politician was being chased by the press and ended up hiding in one of Mellin’s fridges.
That saw the company hit the headlines, but things really began to take off a year later when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the country went into lockdown. The result was that people began to look for another way to get their groceries, with the good old-fashioned milkman on hand to be able to drop things right to your doorstep. The business boomed, resulting in a £50 million investment in 2022 that was led by investment group Insight Partners and the private equity firm ETF Partners, ensuring the company could go from strength to strength.
How It Works
If you live in Guildford or the surrounding area, you might well wonder what a company formed by someone from Lancashire and headquartered in Manchester has got to do with you. It would be a fair question, but the good news is that The Modern Milkman operates around the United Kingdom, with all sorts of people being willing to work as milkmen in order to drop things off right outside your house in the early hours of the morning, ready for you to eat and drink over the following days. All you need to do is create an account and select up to three days when you want things to be delivered.
You then have until 8 p.m. the night before your delivery date to add or remove things from your shop, which will be delivered to you by 7:30 a.m. the following day. Obviously, exactly what you can get delivered will depend entirely on where you live, given the produce available will change from location to location, but alongside your skimmed, semi-skimmed, and full-fat milk, you can find the likes of fresh orange juice, fresh apple juice, milkshakes, and other things of a similar ilk like oat-based drinks or smoothies.
You can also add things that you might want to put into your cupboard, with everything from bread and eggs through to meat, fish, and butter available to you. You can even add household products or fresh vegetables, in addition to yogurts and even vegan alternatives. All you need to do is put in your postcode to find out what’s available and add it to your order. The products come from different suppliers, such as dairies for the milk and egg farms for the eggs, ensuring that you’re also supporting your local area.
About Simon Mellin
Simon Mellin grew up on a farm in Lancashire, the son of a butcher. When he was younger, he would work in his father’s butchers, going to school so rarely that it would be easier to flag up the days that he was there rather than the ones he wasn’t. He left without any real qualifications, but in 2009, he launched a business called Roaming Roosters, which was a free-range chicken farm. That became a company that turned over a few million in profit, supplying for the likes of Gusto and HelloFresh, amongst others.
When he launched The Modern Milkman in his town of Colne, near Burnley, he realised that it needed a way to be modernised if it were to grow. That is where the idea of having things done online came from, and the company grew from there. It has been such a success that it has been able to buy out an American company with the same name, giving Mellin the opportunity to expand his business into the United States of America. Whilst he focuses on profitability in the United Kingdom, Mellin expects much of The Modern Milkman’s growth to come from the US.