Shatto Milk brings back the milkman with delivery service

Ten years ago, the Shatto family bought fresh-bottled milk back to the area. Now they’re bringing back the milkman.

Matt Shatto, son of the founders of Shatto Milk Co. in Osborn, Mo., launched Shatto Milk Home Delivery in Leavenworth this month as a test. The service already has 140 customers — with no advertising or promotion — and will now add two new routes in the Kansas City area by mid-November.

Shatto’s customers not only like the convenience of home delivery, they want to support local businesses like Shatto Milk Co. and Shatto Milk Home Delivery.

“They also like the experience, the idea of having a truly fresh product delivered to their porch,” said Shatto, who is majority partner in the new delivery service. “People who can remember the milkman — or who had been told about them — associate it with a simpler time. So many things that are old are kind of new again.”

Customers place their recurring orders online — and can add or delete items each week. They can order a variety of Shatto products, including milk and flavored milks, butter, cheese, cheese curds and cream, as well as milk accessories like bottle cap removers and pour spouts, and Shatto-branded gift items like beach bags, cow purses and golf balls.

But Matt Shatto also wants to spotlight other locally owned businesses. He is including such products as farm-fresh eggs from Campo Lindo Farms in Lathrop, Mo., freshly roasted coffee from Thou Mayest Coffee Roasters in Kansas City and Maps Coffee Roasters in Lenexa, bread from Farm to Market Bread Co., boneless butterfly pork chops and Kansas City strip steaks from Paradise Locker Meats in Trimble, Mo., salsas and pickles from Dragonfly Gourmet Foods in Olathe and even dog food from Three Dog Bakery.

Shatto delivers the orders once a week to a standard cooler or a custom Shatto milk box (starting at $48.99) on the customer’s front porch. Deliveries are made between 4 a.m. and noon on a specified day. The company asks for a $10 minimum order and a fee of $2.99 per delivery.

Shatto Milk traces its roots to the late 1800s, when Minnie Porter married George Winstead. The couple bought farmland near Osborn and raised seven children. The family added a dairy about 85 years ago.

The Winsteads’ granddaughter, Barbara, married Leroy Shatto in 1972, and he took over the farm in the mid-1980s. But by the early 1990s, many local dairy farmers were shutting down because of the low milk prices they were getting from dairy cooperatives. The Shattos searched for a solution that would take their third-generation operation into the fourth generation and beyond.

They decided to start bottling milk under their own brand and selling it directly to Kansas City and St. Joseph grocery stores, making their first delivery on June 4, 2003.

In 2006, they had become so successful they were honored as second runner-up for the 2006 National Small Business Person of the Year award from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

For the last 15 years, Matt Shatto, Barbara and Leroy’s son, held full-time jobs in agribusiness, the golf industry and local government while also serving as an adviser and board member to Shatto Milk Co. In January, he decided to focus on the new delivery company full time. Shatto, along with his mother and his first employee, visited milk home delivery services in other states, including a Rhode Island dairy company that has provided the service for 134 years.

According to USDA statistics, in the 1950s more than half of consumer milk sales were from home delivery services. By 2005 — the last year the USDA included home-delivered milk in its statistics — it had dropped to only 0.4 percent of sales.

“It began to change in the 1960s with the emergence of supermarkets and a lot of supermarkets began processing their own milk at that time,” said Scott Wallin, spokesman for the National Dairy Council.

But as milk home delivery services have also popped up in such states as Colorado, Oregon and Pennsylvania, it may be time to start crunching those numbers again.

On Friday, Connie Jennings of Leavenworth couldn’t wait to greet her Shatto milkman: Matt Shatto dressed in a crisp white uniform during a test run.

“We love the milk and have tried all the flavors. But I had to go to a store that was kind of out of my way and then go back to return the bottles,” she said. “As long as they will deliver, I will keep ordering.”

Another Leavenworth customer, Pamela Breach, grew up in the United Kingdom, where she had milk delivered to her home every other day.

“It is better than going to the store just to get milk and then getting things you don’t need,” she said

Shatto is so certain the service is ready for a comeback, he is getting two more trucks for the additional Kansas City routes — yet to be determined — in the next couple of weeks. More than 1,000 people have already registered on the Shatto Milk Home Delivery website.

“We’ll let our customers dictate where we go next,” Shatto said.

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 7:59 PM with the headline "Shatto Milk brings back the milkman with delivery service."