Lewis Road Creamery is a

boutique A () is a retail shop that deals in high end fashionable clothing or accessories. The word is French for "shop", which derives ultimately from the Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in anc ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

dairy A dairy is a place where milk is stored and where butter, cheese, and other dairy products are made, or a place where those products are sold. It may be a room, a building, or a larger establishment. In the United States, the word may also des ...

company, located in northern New Zealand. They produce a range of milk products, including varieties of

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of lactating mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfeeding, breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. ...

, cream,

ice cream Ice cream is a frozen dessert typically made from milk or cream that has been flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as Chocolate, cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit, such as strawberries or peaches. Food ...

and

butter Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of Churning (butter), churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 81% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread (food ...

. The company is best known for its brand of chocolate milk, which in 2014 sparked a frenzied, nationwide

shortage In economics, a shortage or excess demand is a situation in which the demand for a product or service exceeds its supply in a market. It is the opposite of an excess supply ( surplus). Definitions In a perfect market (one that matches ...

History

During 2020 the company was sold to Southern Pastures. Southern Pastures already owned half of the company before buying the remaining shares in 2020. In April 2022 Ben Wheeler was appointed as General Manager of their New Zealand operations, wheeler was the 2021 NZ Marketer Of The Year. As part of Matariki celebrations the company launched a new limited-time product milk infused with Horopito. In 2016 Lewis Road Creamery partnered with OOB Organic to create a limited edition strawberry-flavoured milk.

2014 chocolate milk shortage

In October 2014, Lewis Road Creamery in conjunction with Whittaker's Chocolate launched a new brand of chocolate milk. Initial production was staffed by around five people and totaled around 1000 liters, sold in 750ml and 300ml

bottle A bottle is a narrow-necked container made of an impermeable material (such as glass, plastic or aluminium) in various shapes and sizes that stores and transports liquids. Its mouth, at the bottling line, can be sealed with an internal ...

s. Reaction to its release was overwhelmingly positive, centering on its remarkable richness and creaminess. Due to its immense

popularity In sociology, popularity is how much a person, idea, place, item or other concept is either liked or accorded status by other people. Liking can be due to reciprocal liking, interpersonal attraction, and similar factors. Social status can be d ...

and

cult Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...

appeal, nationwide demand was greater than the quantity supplied, resulting in a shortage that often saw stores sell out of supplies before the end of the morning. This shortage prompted local

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket is larger and has a wider selecti ...

s and

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholes ...

ers to take extreme measures to secure stock and ensure fair purchasing. In some cases, rationing was implemented so as to limit the purchase to two bottles per person, and

security guard A security guard (also known as a security inspector, security officer, factory guard, or protective agent) is a person employed by a government or private party to protect the employing party's assets (property, people, equipment, money, etc.) ...

s were hired to monitor shoppers and fridges containing chocolate milk. The shortage also resulted in the emergence of chocolate milk

black market A black market is a Secrecy, clandestine Market (economics), market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality, or is not compliant with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services who ...

s, ranging from scalpers attempting to resell bottles on TradeMe at three to four times their original price to

counterfeit A counterfeit is a fake or unauthorized replica of a genuine product, such as money, documents, designer items, or other valuable goods. Counterfeiting generally involves creating an imitation of a genuine item that closely resembles the original ...

chocolate milk production. Founder Peter Cullinane - formerly of Saatchi & Saatchi - insisted that they did not deliberately engineer the shortage as a marketing strategy. He claimed they were at first worried they couldn't sell the initial production of 1000 litres, but this worry turned out to be unfounded. He said they had a marketing budget of $60,000, but had to stop advertising after spending only a third of it because of unprecedented demand.

References

External links

Life and death over chocolate milk: the madness of Lewis Road

Why has everyone fallen in love with Lewis Road Creamery?

All products made by Lewis Road Creamery
{{Brands of New Zealand Dairy products companies of New Zealand New Zealand brands