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Spilled milk in redesigned jug frustrating some consumers

Retailers laud cost savings, 'caseless' shipping, better fridge fit as advantages

By Stephanie Rosenbloom
New York Times

Published on Sunday, Jul 06, 2008

NORTH CANTON: A simple change in the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs consumers less.

What's not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out.

The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.

''I hate it,'' said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam's Club.

''It spills everywhere,'' said Amy Wise, a homemaker.

''It's very hard for kids to pour,'' said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.

But retailers are undeterred by the prospect of upended bowls of Cheerios. The new jugs have many advantages from their point of view, and Sam's Club intends to roll them out broadly, making them even more prevalent.

Experts say the redesign of the milk jug is an example of
the changes likely to play out in the American economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products and procedures must be redesigned for greater efficiency.

Pulling that off is vital to lowering the nation's energy usage without hurting the quality of life.

''This is a key strategy as a path forward,'' said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. ''Re-examining, 'What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?' I think in this changing economic climate, redesign is a key strategy for managing costs.''

Wal-Mart Stores is already moving down this path. But if the milk jug example is any indication, some of the changes will take getting used to on the part of consumers. A lot of people spill milk when first using the new jugs.

''When we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback,'' said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart. ''And they're saying, 'Why's it in a square jug? Why's it different? I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk?' ''

Mary Tilton tried to educate the public as she stood at Sam's Club, luring shoppers with chocolate chip cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.

''Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly,'' Tilton said to passing customers as she added information about the jugs' environmental and cost savings. Instead of picking up the jug, as most people tend to do, she kept it on a table and gently tipped it toward a cup.

Mike Compston, who owns a dairy in Yerington, Nev., described the pouring technique in a telephone interview as a ''rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.''

Demonstrations are but one of several ways Sam's Club is evangelizing the containers. Signs in the aisle laud their cost savings and ''better fridge fit.''

Some customers have become converts.

''With the new refrigerators with the shelf in the door, these fit nice,'' said April Buchanan. Others, even those who rue the day their tried-and-true jugs were replaced, praised the lower cost, $2.18 versus $2.58 a gallon. Sam's Club said that is a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon compared with old jugs.

The new jug marks a sharp break with the way dairies and grocers have traditionally produced and stocked milk.

Early one recent morning, the creators and producers of the tall rectangular jugs donned goggles and white coats to walk the noisy, chilly production lines at Superior Dairy in Canton. It was founded in 1922 by a man who was forced to abandon the brandy business during Prohibition. Five generations of Soehnlens work there, bottling and shipping milk in two different ways.

The old way is inefficient and labor-intensive, according to members of the family. The other day, a worker named Dennis Sickafoose was using a long hook to drag plastic crates loaded with jugs of milk onto a conveyor belt.

The crates are necessary because the shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy.

They also can be filthy. ''Birds roost on them,'' said Dan Soehnlen, president of Superior Dairy, which spun off a unit called Creative Edge to design and license newfangled packaging of many kinds. He explained these facts of life standing in pools of soapy run-off from milk crates that had just been washed. Approximately 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy alone to keep the crates clean, Soehnlen said.

The biggest innovation in the caseless system is that the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs atop one another, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.

With no crates to lift and keep clean, the company estimates that ''caseless'' shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam's Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, so trips to each Sam's Club store have been reduced from five a week to two, a big fuel savings. Also, Sam's Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.

The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam's Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. ''That's our idea of fresh milk,'' Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.

Sam's Club started rolling out the boxy jugs in November, and they are now in 189 stores around the country. They will appear soon in more Sam's Club stores and perhaps, eventually, in Wal-Marts.

NORTH CANTON: A simple change in the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs consumers less.

Get the full article here.


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