In 2024, nobody in Seattle needs a milkman. We've got refrigeration and pasteurization that give milk a shelf life of 21 days. Grocery and corner stores are everywhere. And in an age when you can order groceries to your house with your phone, the image of a bow-tied milkman setting a glass bottle on your doorstep almost seems too quaint to be true.
"I meet a lot of random people being like, 'You guys are still out here?'" said Shaun Martindale, a delivery driver for Smith Brothers Farms, parking his cow-printed truck outside a customer's house on Queen Anne last month.
More has changed since 1920, when Smith Brothers founder Ben Smith bought a cow in West Seattle and started selling milk in his neighborhood. Seattle's population has more than doubled, for one. As technological advances have changed the world, Smith Brothers has pivoted their business model more than once. But a focus on personal service and human connection has helped the company survive for 104 years.
On a recent delivery in his refrigerated truck, Martindale scanned his tablet to confirm an order then loaded up a plastic crate with milk, juice, yogurt, bread and eggs, checking the eggs for broken shells. In a flash, he'd already unloaded the crate into the white Smith Brother's box on the front porch, sprinting back to the truck. Some stops take longer: One customer was a pediatrician, whom Martindale would ask for advice after the birth of his first son.
Martindale is one of nearly 70 men and women who deliver milk for Smith Brothers these days (although Martindale jokes that he's also a wildlife wrangler, given the creatures he's waved off during milk runs: bear cubs, deer and raccoons). He's been with Smith Brothers since March 2020, averaging a service time of 87 seconds per customer, knocking out up to 287 stops on a milk run covering Queen Anne, Fremont and Wallingford. He's a living example of the core principle that has helped Smith Brothers weather a century of change, says Dustin Highland, Ben Smith's great-grandson and the company's president and CEO: "The Smith Brothers name is synonymous with friendly milkmen.
Highland chuckles at the thought of his great-grandfather walking down the streets of West Seattle with a cow, but in 1920, West Seattle was a study in change. There were rolling hills and plenty of farmland, but there was also a burgeoning business district sprouting on California Avenue, with national chains like Piggly Wiggly, JC Penney and Woolworth. Seattle's population was about 315,000, less than half today's figure of nearly 800,000. Smith bought a retail dairy in 1920 for $3,800, upping his one-cow operation to 18 cows with a 50-gallon-a-day milk route. By the 1970s, there were 30 Smith Brothers milkmen, and the company was steadily growing, even with more people buying milk at the supermarket.
The dairy farm moved to Royal City in 2001, when "strict environmental regulations" made it too expensive to operate in Kent, according to Dustin Highland, Ben Smith's great-grandson and the company's president and CEO. This left the company headquarters on West Valley Highway.
But after the USDA made changes to exemptions that impacted midsized dairies in 2006, Smith Brothers had to make a choice, Highland said: "manage dairy farms and join a co-op, or focus on processing and distribution." They chose the latter, selling the dairy farm. Nowadays, Smith Brothers buys raw milk from farms in Buckley, Enumclaw, Royal City and Yakima, trucking it to their processing operation in Kent for pasteurization and packaging.
In order to survive without the dairy farm, Smith Brothers had to diversify its product line and upgrade its systems. Now they deliver a lot more than dairy products: juice, fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, bread and even cold-brew coffee. And more has changed this century: There's now a Smith Brothers app and an updated website. Moving away from contracting independent milkmen who owned their routes and trucks, Smith Brothers began hiring their delivery drivers about 15 years ago.
Bringing staff in-house, expanding their product line and improving technology laid the groundwork for Smith Brothers to be successful when the coronavirus pandemic upended the world in 2020. "We went from 55,000 customers to 65,000 customers," said driver Shaun Martindale. "We were swamped; Smith Brothers blew up." Highland said the company grew by 50% during those early COVID days, prompting them to build a new distribution center in Federal Way. "Growth has slowed tremendously, but we're still adding 1,000 customers a month," Highland said.
Martindale is one of nearly 70 men and women who deliver milk for Smith Brothers these days (although Martindale jokes that he's also a wildlife wrangler, given the creatures he's waved off during milk runs: bear cubs, deer and raccoons). He's been with Smith Brothers since March 2020, averaging a service time of 87 seconds per customer, knocking out up to 287 stops on a milk run covering Queen Anne, Fremont and Wallingford. He's a living example of the core principle that has helped Smith Brothers weather a century of change, says Dustin Highland, Ben Smith's great-grandson and the company's president and CEO: "The Smith Brothers name is synonymous with friendly milkmen.
Highland chuckles at the thought of his great-grandfather walking down the streets of West Seattle with a cow, but in 1920, West Seattle was a study in change. There were rolling hills and plenty of farmland, but there was also a burgeoning business district sprouting on California Avenue, with national chains like Piggly Wiggly, JC Penney and Woolworth. Seattle's population was about 315,000, less than half today's figure of nearly 800,000. Smith bought a retail dairy in 1920 for $3,800, upping his one-cow operation to 18 cows with a 50-gallon-a-day milk route. By the 1970s, there were 30 Smith Brothers milkmen, and the company was steadily growing, even with more people buying milk at the supermarket.