Some visitors to County Yankee Grocer in Houlton, Maine, during recent weeks may have witnessed the strange sight of customers buying 12 half gallons of Houlton Farms Dairy chocolate milk at once.
People have been eager to stock up on the drink – a local favorite in the town of approximately 6,000 people – since supply chain issues have made it disappear from shelves. While the Houlton Farms cows are producing milk, a special chocolate mix the company uses has been difficult to obtain.
“Some of you have noticed the lack of Chocolate milk on the shelves,” said Houlton Farms Dairy in a Facebook post. “Unfortunately we are experiencing what much of the world is experiencing, supply chain problems. The company that makes our special cocoa mixture we use for our product is having a hard time with raw products, resulting in a shortage. We do not know how long this shortage will last, but we are expecting to be out well into March. We apologize for this inconvenience, and we are doing what we can to expedite the process.”
Houlton Farms first started purchasing a pallet with 40 bags of chocolate milk mix every three months in the early 1980s, according to The Washington Post. At that time, a representative of a company called Bowey Krimko offered to have his company create a unique mix to “produce just the right shade of brown and the right amount of creaminess.”
Bowery Krimko was absorbed into Tate & Lyle, a global food and beverage conglomerate headquartered in London, through acquisitions. An Illinois-based arm of Tate & Lyle supplies the special chocolate mix to the dairy.
If you count comments from the Houlton Farms Dairy Facebook page as evidence, the custom mix has been a success.
“Best chocolate milk in the world. That’s not an opinion that’s a fact!!!” said one user on the post about the recent product shortage.
Her comment was one of 100.
“I’ve traveled far and wide, tasting milk and dairy everywhere, and your products are superior in every way. Thank you for not skimping on quality when times are difficult,” said another commenter.
Darrin Peterson, an executive with Tate & Lyle based in Illinois, oversees the company’s global stabilizers and functional systems business. He confirmed that the Houlton Farms mix is a unique a combination of cocoa, a stabilizer called carrageenan and several other ingredients.
Demand for mixes such as the Houlton Farms blend increased as schools went back in session after pandemic-related closures, said Peterson.
Typically, Tate & Lyle would import cocoa powder from West Africa, Brazil and other places. Since the pandemic, the company has looked to source cocoa from distributors in the U.S. among other efforts to speed up delivery.
According to Peterson, a tangle of factors has caused a delay in providing the chocolate mix. He said Tate & Lyle’s imported raw materials are being impacted by continuing backups at ports. For example, when the Suez Canal was blocked last year, two Tate & Lyle containers were trapped on the stuck ship.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, labor shortages and other issues have caused continuing supply chain problems. Labor issues at a Tate & Lyle plant in Sycamore, Ill., also contributed to the chocolate mix delay.
So, when Houlton Farms co-owner Eric Lincoln spoke to chocolate mix supplier in December, he learned it might take 12 weeks to get the powder.
That’s triple the normal wait time.
“You hear everybody is having trouble,” said Lincoln, who started working at the 84-year-old dairy in high school and bought it with family members in 1981. “It’s just our turn to have our turn.”
“Anyone in the food industry today, whether you’re a small processor like Houlton or a large one like Kraft Foods, everybody is feeling the same kinds of pinches in their supply chains,” Peterson said. “It’s unavoidable.”
Earlier on in the pandemic, Lincoln tried out a new egg nog supplier in California after the typical Houlton Farms suppler in Maine announced over the summer it could no longer make its product, also due to supply chain issues. Customers were not happy.
“I almost wish I never bought it,” Lincoln said. “That was a good lesson not to mess with the chocolate milk.”
He decided to use most of the remaining mix for chocolate milk sent to schools. That’s why customers were stocking up on half gallons, and why County Yankee Grocer had to institute a limit of one chocolate milk per customer, according to store manager Joshua Brisley.
Tracey Albert, 38, was one of the shoppers who was able to find some of her favorite chocolate milk at the store last month. She’s been drinking it regularly since elementary school even though she is lactose intolerant.
“Nothing holds a candle to it,” Albert said.
“We are honored that the appreciation for our products has drawn so much attention,” said a Facebook post from the dairy after The Washington Post reported about its chocolate milk shortage.
The outlet said that an email from Tate & Lyle indicated that the mix could actually come as soon as this week. However, Lincoln said there are still other supply chain issues the business has to worry about.
“It’s just a lot of things that you never used to think about, now you have to think about,” he said.
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