Got a craving for cookies and milk, but only have a package of Oreos to your name and none of the cow juice that’ll really make the chocolate pop? Well, believe me, I think we’ve all been there. (Except for the lactose intolerant, of course.) However, when it comes to comparing farm-fresh milk with store-bought Pasteurized, homogenized milk, there’s no actual comparison. Farm milk wins every time, but it’s hard to find a farm that’ll sell you milk at 3 AM. That’s why German farmer Bruno Stauf has debuted a 24-hour stainless-steel milk vending machine.
The vending machine, or milchtankstelle, is located on Stauf’s dairy farm in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, Germany, just outside of Cologne. The machine is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and for 70 cents per liter, you’ve got the freshest of fresh milk from 78 cows in Stauf’s barns. More importantly, it solves a problem Stauf had with too much demand and too few hours in the day for operations.
“I only had a few customers before I opened the station because they had to come at set milking times, which was a problem,” the dairy farmer told Reuters. “Now they can buy my milk whenever they want. Customers say that the milk on sale in supermarkets doesn’t taste good any more. Supermarkets work on improving the shelf life, but people just want fresher milk. People come from as far away as Cologne to buy milk from my station.”
Stauf spent 12,000 Euros on his machine, but he’s confident it will pay off in the long run. He sells his milk for 70 cents a liter, versus getting 20 cents a liter for it from the local dairy bottler. Customers can bring their own bottles to refill, or buy bottles there, no doubt for a premium. Sounds like a great idea to me!
Tags: 24-hour milk station, milk filling station, milk vending machine, unusual foods, milchtankstelle, Bruno Stauf, Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, Germany
