Time in a Bottle: After Nearly a Century Crescent Ridge Dairy is Still Delivering Milk in Glass—And a Whole Lot More
Photos by Michael Piazza
In 1932, Malby Parrish started a milk delivery business from Crescent Ridge Dairy, his newly purchased farm in southeastern Massachusetts. The country was in the middle of the Great Depression and the business began modestly; it was just Malby Parrish and a 1928 Chevrolet delivery truck bringing quart bottles of whole milk to the little town of Sharon.
But Malby “was always looking for ways to develop the business,” says his grandson Mark Parrish, the third-generation owner. Today, Crescent Ridge still delivers milk in glass bottles along with hundreds of locally grown or produced products to customers throughout Eastern Massachusetts: Boston and the MetroWest as far as Shrewsbury. There are now 12 trucks and two vans delivering to more than 1,000 customers every weekday.
Even with the wide selection of other products, Crescent Ridge customers—like consumers nationwide—are focused on protein and buying more milk. “Dairy is having its moment,” says Rob McCarthy, the company’s director of business growth and development.
Crescent Ridge’s growth has been steady ever since its beginnings. Within a year after starting the milk delivery business, Malby Parrish and his wife, Mildred, added cows to their pasture, though most of the milk came from several of the other farms that used to thrive in the area. Four years later they built a pasteurization and bottling plant and soon were bottling 325 quarts of milk every day. So, Malby bought more delivery trucks.
The routes expanded to include neighboring towns such as Stoughton and Foxborough during the 1950s. And in 1968 Crescent Ridge opened a dairy bar at the farm where the second generation of Parrish boys learned the business: Stanley was in charge of sales and marketing, while Robert’s strengths were in operations and accounting.
To build sales, Stanley and a couple of other salesmen would pick out a town and go door to door selling the company’s delivery service with free samples of milk. Meanwhile, Robert kept all the machines running. “Bob was a genius who could fix any piece of equipment,” says Chris Alden, who succeeded him as director of operations. Alden started working at Crescent Ridge in 1982 when he was 17 and has been there ever since.
The company grew quickly in the 1980s. “Crescent Ridge had just purchased the Needham Dairy routes and that enabled us to get into the MetroWest suburbs,” Alden says. “We were delivering milk six days a week; some customers got twice-a-week deliveries.”
In the early 1990s, when a recession hit Massachusetts, Crescent Ridge pivoted. Instead of expanding delivery routes, the company started offering nondairy products to their customers. Stanley Parrish, Mark’s father, got the idea at a national conference of dairies that used glass bottles. “It opened his eyes to what dairies in other parts of the country were doing,” says Mark. Crescent Ridge started with orange juice concentrate shipped from Florida and bottled it in their own plant. As they added more products, the average delivery ticket grew from milk, eggs and bread to 20 different items.
In a fortuitous convergence of events, Rob McCarthy came to Crescent Ridge in 2018 from Walden Local, where he’d been part of the start-up team that developed a delivery service for locally raised meat. As McCarthy began expanding the number of local products available to Crescent Ridge’s customers, the Covid pandemic hit and suddenly it seemed as though everyone wanted their groceries delivered.
“Within three days of the shutdown, our waiting list had a couple thousand names on it,” he notes. Mark Parrish recalls fielding calls from customers who pleaded for deliveries. “We weren’t sure at first if we could continue to deliver,” he says. “So, we packed up orders and passed them out to customers who drove up to the loading dock.”
It wasn’t long before delivery services were deemed essential. Crescent Ridge drivers were back in their trucks loaded with groceries along with dairy items, especially ice cream. “During the first six months of the pandemic we sold a boatload of ice cream,” Alden says, “and sales have remained high ever since.” Although Crescent Ridge ice cream is no longer made on site, the factory in Roslindale that produces it uses recipes developed by the Parrish family.
The pandemic shutdown in 2020 “really gave us a tailwind,” Mark Parrish says. “I was concerned it might be just a bubble, but it has continued to be beneficial.” It took Crescent Ridge a while to adjust to the surge in demand, but the waiting list has been eliminated. However, the waitlist for new delivery trucks is a supply chain issue. “It takes 12 months from the time we order new trucks until they are delivered,” he explains. The fleet of 12 delivery trucks covers 300,000 miles in a year. They are custom built with a freezer and a curbside door so drivers have easy access to the items inside.
A seasonal challenge is the weather. Snowstorms like those of the past winter “wreak havoc on the process of getting customers’ orders to them,” Alden says. “I’m a fanatic about weather,” he adds. “It’s the last thing I check before I go to bed.”
As a delivery service whose founder was literally in the driver’s seat, Crescent Ridge values the employees who bring products to their customers. New drivers go through Department of Transportation training and then spend a month with a veteran driver before they get a route of their own. They follow a challenging schedule, reporting to the farm at 4am and are on the road till early afternoon when they return with a truck full of empty glass bottles. On the road, many of them bond with their customers. “They’ll pick up the newspaper on the driveway and bring it to the house with the milk,” Alden says, “or bring treats for the family dog.” A recently retired longtime driver watched children of his customers grow up and was even invited to their weddings.
The milk delivered by Crescent Ridge’s trucks has its own history. Most of the local dairies that were the original suppliers were sold or had gone out of business in the 1970s and ’80s, just as demand for Crescent Ridge milk was increasing. For several years the company turned to area cooperatives for milk, and in 2023 chose to source its milk from Oakridge Farm, a fifth-generation family dairy in Ellington, CT. “We wanted to have a more local source of our milk,” says Alden.
Twice a week a tanker from Oakridge arrives at Crescent Ridge. After testing for antibiotics, the milk is pasteurized and bottled in less than two hours. “This means our customers are getting milk that has been processed within a couple of days from milking,” he says.
Crescent Ridge has expanded livestock on its own farm, including a herd of Hereford and Angus cattle as well as Heritage Cross pigs. They supply most of the local meat for deliveries. There also are meats from Maine Family Farms in Portland and Adams Farm in Athol.
Meanwhile, the number of other locally grown or produced items on Crescent Ridge’s online shopping page continues to grow. Today, the company’s customers choose from more than 700 items, from artisan breads to pierogis, tortillas and falafel. They can get fish and chicken, too, and even copies of Edible Boston.
In his search for locally sourced products, McCarthy, in his business development role, buys direct from producers such as Reed Farm in Sunderland; their pasture-raised eggs are among Crescent Ridge’s top 10 recurring orders. He partners with distributors like Seacrest Foods of Lynn for artisan cheeses and Marty’s Local of South Deerfield for several other New England–produced items.
This summer the partnership with Marty’s will introduce picked-to-order produce for Crescent Ridge customers. “They will be able to order up to two days before delivery so that they’re getting produce fresh from the field and there won’t be waste on the production and delivery end,” McCarthy says.
Throughout its history, Crescent Ridge has emphasized the quality and locality of the products it delivers. “The products we offer come from people who share our belief in the importance of a resilient and healthy food system,” says McCarthy. “We want to create and support local jobs.”
As he carries on the legacy of his grandfather, Mark Parrish notes that the fourth generation is already involved in the business. His son John Parrish is finance director and son-in-law Colby Parrish-Wadel is agricultural director. Mark is also proud of the longevity of the staff at Crescent Ridge; most are long-term employees. For example, Alden, the director of operations, has been with the business for 44 years.
Although Crescent Ridge has grown and diversified over its 94-year history, it hasn’t forgotten its humble roots. As Alden is fond of pointing out, “For our customers, we’re still the milkman.”
This story appeared in the Summer 2026 issue.
