Chilled But Not Chilling: Why RTD Milk bevs don't travel far

The day we solve the cold chain conundrum, is the day Milk Beverages industry will become real cream! no cap.

68% of cold storage capacity is used for potatoes^[1] ; there's a lack of multi-commodity facilities. Maybe potato milk is the way to go. Just kidding

Also, many reefer trucks lack proper insulation or temperature control. When there is no universal cold chain SOPs across sectors → quality suffers. Fuck beverages, we need more of cold chain startups.

India’s got around 13,000 long-haul and 8,000 short-haul reefer trucks^[2] . Sounds like a lot… until you peek across the pond. The US? Just casually cruising with 500,000+ cold trucks^[3] , keeping everything from milk to sushi frosty coast-to-coast.

Btw Amul, Mother Dairy, and Nestlé succeed nationally because they have in-house or partner-controlled cold chains, and their volume justifies it. For everyone else, the road is long (and hot).

Let’s look into point of sales. India runs on 13M+ kirana stores^[4] , but only a tiny % have cold storage. No I am not talking about tiny storefront fridges (remember scale🙄).

So unless your milkshake comes with its own AC, you’re stuck with:
👉 Modern trade (hello, Reliance & Big Bazaar)
👉 Cafés, QSRs, and office pantries
👉 D2C with packaging that's colder than your ex, and expensive

Sorry for sounding so depressing about this segment. But, here’s the good stuff - we have started to see cold chain logistics players come up: Snowman, Coldrush, Coldman, Allcargo Gati (not new), Kool-ex

And urban millennial and Gen Z consumers are driving demand for:

• Protein-rich shakes

• Functional milk beverages (turmeric, ashwagandha, probiotics)

• Guilt-free indulgence (cold coffee, dark chocolate milk)

Honestly, at this point if you’re evaluating any RTD Milk Beverages business, you should look into their operational efficiency. Definitely ask them these two things

1. Spoilage Rate (%)

2. Cold Chain Coverage (%)

They are most likely solving it by going local, and are yet to crack long distance distribution.

Ta da.👋🏽

Keep ghosting bad startups

Team Coffeetable☕️