In Mountain Brook, Dairy — and More — Can Come Right to Your Door
By Donna Cornelius
Like elevator operators and file clerks, milkmen aren’t folks you often run into these days.
Except in Mountain Brook.
Colby White, the owner of Colby’s Creamery, has been delivering milk and other products door to door in Mountain Brook for almost two years. He offers Barber’s Dairy products and Royal Foods meats.
White started his delivery service in Pell City, where he and his family live. He thought Mountain Brook would be a good place to expand his business, he said.
“Mountain Brook was Barber’s biggest home delivery route about 18 years ago,” he said.
While the duties of a milkman may be unfamiliar to young people, White got his first taste of home delivery when he was a child, he said.
“We lived in California, and I delivered milk with friends of our family,” he said. “I was delivering when I was 10. As a senior in high school, I had my own business.”
Once he and his family moved to Alabama, White worked for seven years in the Barber’s Dairy butter plant in downtown Birmingham, he said.
Home delivery is a convenience for most of his customers, White said.
“People will say, ‘Oh, this would be nice for my parents’ or for another elderly couple, but most of my customers are busy families with kids in junior high or high school,” he said.
White’s Mountain Brook deliveries are once a week. There’s a $3 delivery fee per order, no minimum purchase, and all orders are put together especially for his customers, he said.
“At 12:30 a.m., I’m loading my truck,” he said. “At 2:30, I deliver the first products. Sometimes I leave them on the doorstep or in an icebox outside, and sometimes I put them in people’s refrigerators – whatever the customer wants me to do.”
In addition to milk, Colby’s Creamery offers yogurt, sour cream, eggs and butter. Other items on his order form are sausage, bacon, pork chops and chicken tenders. He even has Costa Rican coffee and flavored coffee creamers.
He said he hopes to soon offer organic milk along with his Borden’s Dairy products.
“I have a verbal agreement with an Alabama organic dairy, and we hope to have a deal worked out soon,” he said. “We’ll try to offer that milk in glass bottles.”
White has three sons, the oldest in college.
“I wanted to start something they could get into later if they want to,” he said.” One of my sons, a middle school student, runs the route with me.”
White said he can add routes in other communities “if I can get 10 customers in a particular area.”
“I’m trying to get Mountain Brook built up now,” he said. “I’d like to have several people working for me.”
White makes sure his service is reliable as well as convenient, he said.
“I delivered during the big snowstorm last year,” he said. “I’ve never missed a day.”
Another time, he said, “A customer texted me at 2:20 a.m. to say their road was flooded. I texted back, ‘I’m at your front door right now.’”
For more information, visit Colby Creamery’s Facebook page or call White at 362-6841.