‘A dying breed’: The last of the corner milk bars

Tavlarides merged the American concept of the soda fountain with the Greek experience of milk shops to create a uniquely Australian venue: the milk bar.

Milk bars, often run by migrants, quickly became community hubs and over time they diversified into selling cigarettes, newspapers, milk, bread and lollies.

“Unfortunately, the ’90s was the last decade where they really couldn’t compete any more,” Donnelly said. “You’ve got supermarkets, 24/7 shopping, petrol stations started to offer milk bar items so they became drive through milk bars essentially.”

IbisWorld recorded 6978 convenience stores in Australia in 2023 – a number that has flatlined since 2018.

“Small businesses constantly need to evolve and if they don’t evolve, then they unfortunately can’t survive and have to close down,” Donnelly said.

He said some iconic Melbourne milk bars like Rowena Corner Store in Richmond, Cowderoy’s Dairy in St Kilda West and Jerry’s Milk Bar in Elwood had managed to reinvent themselves as hybrid cafes and specialty grocery stores.

Con Coustas, owner of the Rowena Corner Store, said it was a sense of community not nostalgia which enabled his milk bar to thrive.

“One of the things that I loved about milk bars in my childhood was that’s where we all hung out, that’s where we got the news,” he said. “It wasn’t just a transactional thing, it was a sustaining connection throughout the community.”

Coustas said that after 22 years at Rowena Corner Store it had never been more evident to him how important small family-run local places were and local community.

“Using food and coffee as a medium to make these places where people could actually sit and congregate and talk and sort out local issues and get to know each other and share stories, share births, share deaths and tragedies,” he said. “I think it’s a step back into the possible future where people actually want to interact with each other and it provides a warmth in an otherwise cold, barren landscape.”

However, ghost signage is all that remains of many milk bars that have closed down and have been converted into other types of retail, cafes or apartments.

Pat Nourse, creative director of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, said the rise of Australian cafe culture had taken its toll on milk bars that had not changed with the times.

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“Unless something surprising happens, or unless there’s a big change, I think they might be a dying breed,” he said. “We still consume per capita quite a lot of milk compared to other countries. But if you talk to the dairy authorities, they’ll say that the main reason for that is because we drink a lot of flat whites.”

Where once people went to a milk bar as a third space, now they go to a cafe or a bubble tea bar, Nourse said.

“It’s not that the milk bar is gone, it’s just that it’s been transformed,” he said. “We are drinking our milk in coffees and we’re having it through a wide gauge straw with some tapioca pearls in it.”

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