So... funny story. Back in March, you know, because Covid, I decided to start getting milk delivered. Oberweis Dairy had an advert about a deal they were running. The promo said that if you order over $20 of products for delivery each week they will waive the weekly delivery fee. Plus they offered a free Oberweis delivery cooler for your front porch.
Ordering $20 of dairy a week was not going to be a problem. More importantly, I thought that delivery of the basics like milk and eggs would keep me from having to go to the store every week and save on my potential exposure. Snacks and non-perishables I can get on Amazon but perishables are something that I'd have to go out for at least once a week. So I signed up and we began our adventure.
Unfortunately, I was not the only one with this idea.
So, my cooler was delivered and my deliveries began. I was told that my items would be delivered by 8pm on Wednesday night. That is when the truck is in DeKalb, Wednesdays. Due to the sudden popularity of this service, however, my Wednesday night deliveries began to get later and later and eventually became very early Thursday morning deliveries. Like 2 am Thursday morning. Well, the problem was that I'd stay up, you see, to bring in the refrigerated items to sanitize them, but also so they weren't on the porch all night. Not that that was a big deal back in March, but in April/May, it was starting to be a bit warmer and I didn't want to take a chance with my dairy products getting too warm.
It was annoying, but mostly I felt bad for those delivery guys, they were working long shifts. There weren't enough drivers and I think more importantly, not enough refrigerated trucks to get everything delivered. Eventually, though, they hired more drivers and got more trucks and my deliveries began arriving by noon on Wednesday. That issue was fixed within a few months.
One issue however that persists is shortages. I order at least a gallon and a half of milk a week, most often 2 1/2, plus eggs, cheese, and sometimes yogurt or granola, lemonade, butter, chocolate milk, and a couple of times bread. (The bread is preservative-free and quite delicious. But it starts to mold very quickly.)
Almost every week something I order is not available. A few weeks into this delivery experiment I received an email addressing the shortages. They said that when they don't have enough of something, priority is given to their long time customers over new customers. I totally get that, seems fair. Sometimes it would be disappointing to not get half and half or cream or chocolate milk. Sometimes no eggs. These things happen and there is always something unavailable.
Today's order, however, was unexpectedly odd. It arrived promptly by 11 am. Luna was sitting by the storm door watching the guy deliver, so he even left a little milk-bone on top of the cooler for her. So sweet!
So I go out to bring my loot in from the cooler and there's this note on top:
No big deal, I mean, I've never gotten a note before about a shortage, but I always expect it. The notes must be something new. I look into the cooler and notice that I did get my chocolate milk, that's big because the kids love their chocolate milk. There are eggs and cheese and yogurt and even a raspberry danish that looked good on the website and I thought I'd try. But, what I did not get today was milk! WTF?! That had to be a mistake, right? Can a dairy run out of milk? I can't do without milk. What is happening right now?
I called the number on the note and they are delivering my 2 gallons of milk tomorrow. The driver actually ran out of whole milk. (Could he have written that on the note?) He didn't put enough milk on the truck. Yikes! Plan ahead dude! Dog biscuits on the truck, but no milk! That was weird.
.........................
Totally tangential to the story. Before Covid, I had read a news story about how Oberweis was going to file for bankruptcy. They were getting ready to either fold or really scale back their operation. The milk delivery business was outdated and old fashioned and wasn't as popular as it had once been.
Oberweis has to be one of the few businesses that were not killed by Covid. One of the few businesses that were actually saved by Covid. They are actually thriving under this pandemic life we're living.
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