Got Raw Milk? Before MAHA and Goop, There Was ‘the Milk Guy’

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A selection of raw milk and assorted dairy from the Milk Guy.
Photo: Brian Finke

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One evening in February, I received a text: “It’s the Milk Guy.”

A moment later, my phone rang. The man on the line — whom I’d found on a sketchy website recommended to me by an influencer in Tribeca — set up a time to meet. A few days later, I watched from my stoop in Williamsburg as a green van pulled up in front of the church across the street. The Milk Guy sported a skullcap and smelled faintly of cigarettes. He was not the frat boy I bought weed from in college; no, he looked like a dealer from the big leagues. He yanked open the van’s door: The back seats were gutted and replaced with coolers of different sizes, some as large as coffins.

He showed off his mobile cornucopia. He had grass-fed ground beef, chicken, and lamb and vacuum-sealed packs of gray calamari. He had cartons of frozen yogurt and heavy cream, tubs of kefir, and jars of sea moss that his friend had harvested in St. Lucia. He had eggs too with powdery blue shells. Another cooler held large glass bottles of the clearest water I’d ever seen: alkaline water. “The kind that’s free from all the stuff the government puts into it,” the Milk Guy told me. He cradled a jar of liquid that looked like pancake batter. “It’s colostrum,” he said. “This is the good stuff.” I winced when he explained what colostrum was.

And in the middle of the van, in the largest cooler, were gallons and gallons of unmarked milk bottles — all raw, unpasteurized, and straight from the cow’s udder. So many that it looked like one of those carnival games where you try to catch a ring around a bottle’s neck. He handed me my contraband, and I noticed a thin layer of dirt beneath his fingernails.

This was my entrance into the world of interstate raw-milk smuggling. Before RFK Jr., before Gwyneth Paltrow became known more as a wellness influencer than an actress, there was the Milk Guy, slipping into the city quietly to deliver his wares to enthusiasts who believe raw milk is an ancient healing elixir, rich with immune-boosting enzymes and uncorrupted by government intervention. To regulators, it poses a public-health risk as a delivery mechanism for listeria, salmonella, and E. coli.

Owing to these potentially deadly contaminants, federal law bans the interstate sale of raw milk. But inside state lines, it’s up to local lawmakers to decide how it’s sold and shared. In Arkansas, you can get your milk delivered, so long as it comes straight from the farm. In Minnesota, it’s legal but only if you make the trip to the farm yourself and bring your own container to put it in. In New Jersey, raw milk is off limits altogether, while in California you can waltz into Erewhon and pick up a gallon for $20.99.

In New York, raw milk can only be sold on-site. Several farms upstate are licensed to sell the stuff, but none of them appear to deliver, even illegally. If you want raw milk from the New York farm closest to the city, you have to go to Freedom Hill Farm in Otisville, which is approximately 80 miles from Manhattan. Another way to get it is to join a buying club: groups of raw-milk drinkers who take turns making the trip to the farm and bringing the milk back to a shared pickup spot. These clubs can be hard to come by — you kind of have to know a guy — because it’s a legal gray area whether someone is allowed to purchase raw milk on the farm for you.

Or you can call the Milk Guy, who delivers it raw and to your doorstep.

The Milk Guy is not Amish, even if his milk comes from Amish farms in Pennsylvania. He’s actually a chemist with a degree who worked to develop new strains of the chickenpox vaccine. He is soft-spoken, almost bashful, with an airy voice and surprisingly deep reservoirs of patience. He once waited 15 minutes for me after I missed his call while I was in the shower. “Not a problem, my friend,” he replied with a smile after I apologized profusely.

He was eager to tell me stories of how raw milk has helped people, including curing irritable bowel syndrome, strengthening the weak, and even helping to cure breast cancer. He drinks raw when he can, too.

I spent the day riding around with the Milk Guy to see him in action. With his route preloaded onto Google Maps, he uses Siri constantly to text customers that he’s on the way. He’s a careful but quick driver, a terrific parallel parker. As we walked into a riverfront building in Greenpoint, where condos sell for $1.9 million, I asked the Milk Guy if most of his customers are rich. “Uhhh, yeah,” he said. Obviously.

One of the Milk Guy’s customers.
Photo: Brian Finke

When he picked me up, the Milk Guy had 38 stops left, all in North Brooklyn. A tanned 20-something in a matching workout set bought four gallons. A modelish woman in her 60s in chunky clogs met us outside her brownstone for two gallons and a jar of honey. A woman with eyelash extensions and a yappy little dog forked over $99 for a few gallons of raw dairy, seafood, and some alkaline water.

“Most of my customers are not vaccinated,” said the Milk Guy between stops, “and they’re like homeschooling. You know.”

The Milk Guy doubts raw milk will ever make its way into grocery stores in New York. “Big dairy, big pharma, would never let it happen.”

The Milk Guy isn’t the only one illegally transporting raw goods across state lines. Another major player is an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. Instead of relying on a middleman, the Amish produce the dairy and drive it straight to New York. “I was trying to get off oat milk desperately,” said Madison, a Tribeca mom of three who recounted her experience with this farm on TikTok. She was instructed to meet at a dentist’s office. “It felt like a very undercover-mission type of thing,” she said. “I was told to look for a white van, and I was like, Okay, this is crazy.” But when she found the van, a smiling Amish woman handed her the milk as if it were no big deal. This was Madison’s first and last raw-milk pickup, as it gave her a dreadful stomachache. She’s back to oat and trying pistachio milk.

The Health Dad has around 2,240 followers on TikTok, where he posts about seed oils and low-sugar juice boxes. For more than a year, he’s picked up raw milk weekly from the Pennsylvania farm, most recently at a parking lot on Long Island. His youngest child went straight from breastfeeding to raw milk. “I thought all the formulas were trash,” he said. He even brought his own milk to day care but didn’t like to specify that it was raw. “I don’t think I would get in trouble, but I’m like, ‘Oh no, I appreciate that you have milk — but we have our own special, good milk.’”

Katherine, the founder of a downtown acupuncture clinic, is a Milk Guy customer. Eight years ago, after struggling to get pregnant owing to low estrogen, she turned to eastern medicine. “Estrogen in Chinese medicine is equivalent to yin energy, and milk and dairy are also yin,” she told me. If she could nourish her yin, she thought, her estrogen might follow. A few months after ordering her first gallon from the Milk Guy, Katherine got pregnant. “It wasn’t just because of the milk,” she said, “but it was definitely a piece of the puzzle.” (There is no known connection between raw dairy and fertility.)

In the early years of the business, the Milk Guy was the only driver, and his route spanned all of riverside Brooklyn. It sometimes took him 12 hours to complete, and he finished around three or four in the morning. Now the Milk Guy is one of three. My Milk Guy covers Brooklyn and Staten Island. Milk Guy No. 2 handles Manhattan, and the newest recruit, Milk Guy No. 3, takes on Long Island and Queens. The operation has been running for more than 13 years, sustained by longtime raw-milk devotees and, more recently, an influx of first-time customers who are curious to see what all the unpasteurized fuss is about. Twice a week, someone from the company picks up the orders at the farm and drives them to an undisclosed warehouse. This is where the other Milk Guys meet him, transfer the goods into a van, and get on the road to New York.

But even with the extra help these days, the route can be long. Often, the Milk Guy doesn’t return home to his wife and kids until after midnight. And then there are other occupational hazards.

The Milk Guy is usually a gentleman. “I help the ladies,” he told me, explaining how he lugs their milk up three, four flights. But on this day, with squad cars idling nearby, he asked the customer to meet him at the van. “Just in case,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. He popped the trunk, and a young woman with a great haircut, dressed in expensive tailored jeans, picked up her order without ceremony, quickly waved, and headed to the steps of her Williamsburg walk-up.

My half-gallon of raw milk from the Milk Guy sat in the fridge for the next few days, congealing next to a carton of vanilla Chobani coffee creamer. Finally, one afternoon, I decided to risk my life and indulge in a glass. It would be wrong, after all, to waste this illegal, controversial, overpriced, politically charged, and possibly bacteria-infested liquid gold.

And you know what? It was pretty good.

It tasted like milk.

A raw-milk transaction.
Photo: Brian Finke

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