Milk and More Delivered to Your Door

In case you haven’t heard, your local milkman is still flourishing and he wants to pay you a visit.

Still making rounds in the Larchmont-Mamaroneck community is the Hudson Milk Company—a family-owned business located in Shrub Oak, New York that was founded in 1994.

The company offers home milk delivery in the age-old tradition of delivering top quality farm-fresh products to the doorsteps of Westchester and Putnam County consumers in New York and Fairfield County in Connecticut.

According to company owner Tom Rubino, Hudson Milk currently services close to 1,000 households.

“I had met an old fellow, a guy that was retired, an old milkman and he kind of talked me into taking his dozen or so customers that he couldn’t get rid of and that’s how we started, really,” said Rubino of Hudson Milk’s inception back in the ‘90’s.

The company began in northern Westchester with Rubino and his wife, Therese, making all milk deliveries themselves.

“Then we got more calls and then we hired another driver and it progressed from there,” he said.

To date, the company employs three drivers who manage to cover the rather extensive territory.

And despite Hudson Milk’s web presence, the main way that the company advertises is by word of mouth.

“We do very little print advertising; it was basically word of mouth that gave us the opportunity to grow,” said Tom.

Despite a lagging economy, Tom explained, the company has been relatively successful, something he credits to satisfied customers’ testimonies.

“We keep growing. . . I wake up saying ‘I’m a lucky guy’ every day,” he said. “My wife and I are happy that the business keeps growing in this economic climate.”

According to the company website, Hudson Milk prides itself on being “part of the growing movement away from an industrial food production system that has separated people from the source of their food.”

“I don’t think there’s one corporate farm or company that we deal with,” said Tom. “It’s primarily small, independent, family-run farms.”

Their signature glass-bottled milk is sourced from Battenkill Valley Creamery in Salem, New York, an approach that allows for fresher, colder and better-tasting milk.  

In addition to milk, Hudson offers other products such as artisan cheeses; brown free-range “runabout” eggs; strawberry and black raspberry jams from Beth’s Farm Kitchen in Stuyvesant Falls, New York; fresh local grass-fed ground beef from Full Moon Farm in Gardiner, New York and Vermont breads.

So how do Hudson products stack up against items found in supermarkets?

“The quality of the product is just far superior, and then there’s the personal service,” said Tom, acknowledging that he personally knows many of his customers.

According to Tom, his customers are concerned with knowing where their food comes from.

“The criteria for us is that [farmers] do not use the anti-growth hormone, it’s as much grass-fed as they can and that they practice organic and sustainable agricultural methods,” he said, referring to Bovine somatotropin (BST), a hormone found in cattle that some dairies use to increase milk production.

Tom goes on to explain with a measure of disdain, “On the feed lot farms they’re injected with the anti-growth hormones that make the cows just a milking machine, and then when you over-milk the cow, it develops an infection on the udder, then they have to use antibiotics to treat it,” he said, stressing that none of Hudson Milks’ products contain artificial hormones or antibiotics.

Going forward, the company plans to expand it’s reach by supplying restaurants and specialty shops.

One thing, however, remains certain about the professional relationship between the milkman and members of today’s technologically-oriented society.

“People are comfortable [with it], they can email us an order and they know on a specific day when I’m in that area they get a nice cold fresh product delivered right to their door.”

 Are you interested in having a milkman? E-mail the Hudson Milk Company at hudsonmilk@optonline.net or give them a call at (914) 245-0409. The average order Hudson Milk receives goes for about $25 plus an additional $5 delivery fee to cover gas expenses.