January 28, 2020
Taylor Leach
The students at Williston High School, located in Williston, North Dakota, have been consuming more milk in the last three years thanks to a trendy beverage option on their school lunch menu.
Using a state-of-the-art espresso machine that was funded through a grant from the Midwest Dairy Council, the school now uses approximately 500 to 600 gallons of milk each school year on coffee alone.
"Kids consume less milk than they used to, but having the coffee machine has improved milk consumption overall," says the school's Food Service Director Lynelle Johnson in an interview with West Dakota Fox News."If you look at a glass of milk compared to a glass of diet pop or any other drink, it's very high in nutrients, very high in minerals, and not very high in calories. It's good for kids to consume milk."
As fluid milk consumption continues to decline, using milk as the primary ingredient in lattes is one way dairy groups are trying to increase the use of milk in school diets.
At the 2019 MILK Business Conference, Phil Plourd of Blimling and Associates, Inc. touched on the fact that cereal used to be milk’s best friend. Due to the steady decline in cereal consumption, however, milk is now on the hunt for a new bestie.
“I think coffee is milk’s new best friend; they hang out together a lot,” Plourd says. “Milk’s best friend got in trouble, as we eat much less cereal today. If you were to plot a graph of cereal sales and milk sales, it's the same picture. Cereal sales are down 20% since 2009 by volume, milk sales are down 18%. It’s not much more complicated than that in terms of a big bulk of the loss of sales. Coffee still has a lot of upside. I think that coffee is a good friend for traditional milk.”
dairyherd.com
