Don’t Cry Over Stolen Milk

Customers and cows worry for the future of Twin Brook’s milk in some Bellingham grocery stores.

June 8, 2022

Story by Grace Simantel // Photos by Clay Dinehart

Tucked between the Coast Range and the North Cascades, Twin Brook Creamery’s brown Jersey cows mosey about on lush green farmland, awaiting their turn to be milked. Rows of cows transform into rows of clinking glass bottles after an extensive pasteurization, heating and cooling process. 

The bottles are placed in milk crates and driven far and wide. Some remain close to home in Lynden grocery stores, others make the three-and-a-half-hour trek to Port Angeles and some even further, where they will be purchased by expectant customers. An increasing number of bottles, however, meet their demise in stranger ways.  Their contents are being poured out in grocery store bathrooms by shoplifters seeking the glass’s cash value. 

Before this increasingly common theft, customers had long been able to return their empty bottles to any seller of Twin Brook products for a $2 cash deposit. The creamery relies on collecting these bottles for reuse, which reduces the amount of waste generated by their operation. But over the past few years, the Bellingham Co-op and other grocery stores have seen more and more cases of bottles being stolen, emptied and promptly returned for the cash.

In one instance, a shopper attempted to return 60 bottles, likely from multiple locations and became upset when the Co-op could not comply.

At times, this shoplifting can even lead to conflict between shoplifters and store employees. An attack in which a Bellingham Co-op employee was hit in the head with a glass milk bottle was the last straw that broke the cow’s back. Twin Brook milk was temporarily taken off Co-op shelves. The employee suffered a concussion and required stitches but has since recovered. 

“The safety of our staff was so much more important than any one item could be in our store,” said Wynne Marks, store manager of the downtown Co-op location.

In order for this now months-long ban to end, all Bellingham sellers of Twin Brook must agree on a consistent bottle return policy. Larry Stap, co-owner of Twin Brook, put together a proposal that would allow sellers to give shoppers store credit instead of cash, in addition to a two-bottle maximum return.

Currently, two out of the four Bellingham Haggen locations are implementing this policy. However, if even one grocery store in the Bellingham area doesn’t implement the policy, people can continue stealing and returning stolen bottles to locations that still give back cash. Albertsons, which owns Haggen, did not respond to requests for comment as to why only two of their locations have implemented a store credit policy. 

Owned by the Stap family since 1910, Twin Brook’s products are sold in upwards of 240 retailers. The Co-op was one of the first retail outlets to carry the product in 2007 after the switch to on-site glass bottling.

“The Co-op represents local producers, of which I am one,” Stap said. “They have local loans or grants for small producers that want to get started… and you don't see that in your larger store chains, you know? And that's the beauty of the Co-op.”

The Staps are not the only ones who hope to get their product back into the Co-ops. Regular Twin Brook customers have also expressed concern through phone calls and emails to the Co-op. 

“I’ve talked about milk more in the last nine months than I ever thought I would,” Marks said, referring to the many calls she received about the missing product.

Patrons also called the Staps directly, asking what they could do to help and inquiring about what had happened. 

“Oh, you can't believe how many calls we fielded,” Stap said. “Oh, call after call after call.”

The loyalty to the product in part stems from the fact that Twin Brook milk can be hard to substitute with other milk. Its flavor and consistency can be attributed to the Jersey cows themselves, whose milk contains high levels of butterfat, increased protein and beneficial enzymes, said Stap. Their pasteurization process preserves these enzymes and rich flavor. Many milk brands sold in grocery stores are ultra-pasteurized which preserves less of these natural nutrients when pressure-heated at 137 degrees Celsius for two seconds, compared to Twin Brook’s 30 minutes at 68 degrees, he said.

“It is low temperature, vat pasteurized. That means that not everything has been killed in this milk like organic [milk]. Organic is virtually worthless because it's ultra-pasteurized,” said Gigi Berardi, a professor at Western Washington University who teaches courses on sustainable agriculture, community resiliency and cheesemaking.

Customers - which include Berardi - can enjoy the product’s texture and taste while knowing the Jersey cows are well taken care of. The Staps pasture their cows on grassy fields for as long as the season allows, and then feed them the grass previously harvested and stored during the winter. Twin Brook uses no synthetic hormones to stimulate the milk production of the cows and no pesticides or herbicides on the pasture.

If not all Bellingham grocery stores switch to giving store credit for Twin Brook bottles, there are only two solutions the Co-op would agree to: change the packaging material - to rid the product of its quick cash desirability - or get rid of the bottle deposit altogether.

Stap believes neither of these are viable fixes. 

“It kind of defeats the purpose of the incentive for people to bring bottles back, right? Otherwise, if I don't get any money back I might as well just throw it in the recycle bin unless I have a personal desire to be sustainable,” Stap said. “But money will drive people to become more sustainable.”

Berardi agrees. 

“I think changing out of glass bottles is not a working solution,” Berardi said. “I've been teaching for decades and decades in environmental science and environmental studies, and I don't see where [that idea] is coming from.”

Both the problem and solution may appear simple, but Co-op shelves still lack Twin Brook’s product, hinting at a bigger glitch in the system. Slow communication between grocery stores and hesitancy around a new policy are barriers to finding a lasting solution. 

Despite this glitch, the Stap family is still optimistic as they await news from the Co-op.

“For us to lose the Co-op was very personal,” Stap said. “But I'm hopeful we get back in there soon.” 

Grace Simantel is a fourth-year student studying sustainable food systems and film. She is interested in exploring where communities get their food and the historical relationships between land and farmers.