As a dairy farm, a lot of our milk was bough under contract to a milk wholesaler and ultimately went to café chains, restaurants, airlines etc – all businesses that closed at the start of lockdown. We have been building our milk round businesses for over a year and had been gaining more customers through word of mouth. We were working towards being less reliant on supplying the wholesaler and selling more direct to customers but couldn’t have anticipated the demand we saw after lockdown was in place. We had 1000s of emails, calls & orders coming in and did our very best to deliver to as many people as possible. There were a lot of vulnerable customers who couldn’t get supermarket delivery slots and we were able to supply fresh milk, bread and fruit & veg to them using our milk round. We are so proud of the team on the farm and the delivery drivers, they worked incredibly hard, very long hours and went the extra mile to make sure customers didn’t go without.

We have learnt a lot and continuing to change and adapt, right now we are looking at new technology to help us handle customer orders and enable us to take on more doorstep deliveries. We hope that our customers old and new will see the great value service we are providing and stick with us, now the supermarkets are back open. They are supporting local workers and their families, as well as the Kent countryside - without them the farm wouldn’t be here. Plus they get great produce delivered to their door! We work with other local businesses and its really important to us to support them - It’s about working together.

We were delighted to hear we had been nominated in the British Farming Awards – in the Family Farming business of the Year category

“Its a bit of a shock really. When somebody says you're doing something great, you don't really appreciate what you're doing until somebody else says it.” Jonny Gormley, Plurenden Manor Farm”

https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2020-08-17/how-milk-rounds-saved-kent-farm-award-finalist

https://www.britishfarmingawards.co.uk/shortlist/

We are adding new delivery drops all the time so if your are interested in fresh, local milk delivery please get in touch https://plurendenmilk.co.uk/contact-us