Vermont creamery to customers: Please return our glass bottles

By Ethan Weinstein

Apr 13 2023April 13, 2023

Every week, Strafford Organic Creamery milks its Guernsey cows, sending off skim, 1%, 2%, whole, and other milk products to regional retailers in iconic glass bottles.

But there's a catch. After the bottles go out, they need to come back in. And customers haven't been returning them.

"We’ve been pulling bottles out of our backstock," said Amy Huyffer, Strafford's CEO. "Right now, we have zero backstock."

If bottle return rates remain low, the farm could have to dump milk it can't bottle as soon as Friday, Huyffer said on Thursday, adding, "We used every single quart bottle we had yesterday."

Customers can find Strafford's milk products across Vermont and western New Hampshire. Farmers To You, a Middlesex-based food delivery service, also brings the company's products to the Boston area. The creamery's cows live on the 600-acre Rockbottom Farm in Strafford, producing rich milk with a golden tint.

Unlike most companies’ milk, Strafford's is sold only in glass bottles, which customers return to local stores for a $1.50 deposit.

The creamery works with glass for two primary reasons, Huyffer explained. One, it's better for the environment. Two, it better preserves the milk's color and flavor.

Plus, there's the aesthetic.

"When you picture (selling your own milk), you picture your milk in a glass bottle," she said.

Strafford sells about 7,000 bottles a week, and Huyffer estimates that for every bottle at the creamery, there's another 26 in rotation. At its most efficient, Strafford sees a weekly return rate just under 90%, she said, meaning the creamery receives nine bottles back a week for every 10 sold. Currently, the rate is more like 65%.

Bottle shortages are not unfamiliar to Strafford Creamery. At the onset of Covid-19, milk bottle returns slowed as customers sheltered at home and misinformation spread about whether or not to return bottles at all. Around this time last year, Strafford experienced another similar shortage, Huyffer said. The business escaped wasting too much milk, dumping only a little and using some extra to feed pigs on its farm.

A single manufacturer in North America makes glass milk bottles, according to Huyffer, making it difficult to order more. About once a year, Strafford Creamery orders a full tractor trailer's worth of bottles — about 32,000 — to replenish its backstock. But during mud season, such a delivery up the half-mile dirt road to the creamery is impossible.

"Around mud season, if we’re low on bottles, we’re really low on bottles," Huyffer said. "We can't get a truck in here."

Strafford Creamery will have to wait six weeks before a new order of bottles can ship, Huyffer said, prompting the business to take to Facebook to plead for their bottles’ return. At first, Huyffer took the "stick" approach, warning that Strafford would soon run out of bottles and thus start dumping milk.

On Thursday, though, Huyffer opted for the "carrot," creating a contest in which anyone who shared the post or shared a photo returning bottles would be entered to win a T-shirt.

One more request, she said, would make her a happy dairy farmer: "Wash your bottles!"

Want to stay on top of the latest business news? Sign up here to get a weekly email on all of VTDigger's reporting on local companies and economic trends. And check out our new Business section here.

Δ