We’re HUGE fans of coffee here at Vegans Worldwide but we have been recently put off getting it anywhere but our local independent shops like Morning Sunshine, Warwick Street Kitchen and Spa Town Coffee due to popular cafes such as Starbucks and Costa are charging their customers extra to not be part of the dairy industry it seems. These big coffee chains are charging between 40 and 50p extra for the same drink but with the dairy milk replaced with a plant based alternative such as soy or almond.
We wanted to see why they were charging this amount for plant based alternatives when they claim to be actively looking into ways to reduce their environmental impact as well as encouraging their customers to do so too. Starbucks will give you a discount if you bring in a reusable cup to their store therefore actively encouraging their customers to save paper but if you then want your drink to be made with an environmentally friendly milk alternative you will be hit by their huge plant based milk surcharge.
We decided to give Costa and Starbucks the benefit of the doubt as it may be expensive to supply these pant based milk alternatives to all their stores, I mean how would we know we’re just a team of vegans who love writing way too much.
So we decided to ask Starbucks the following question:
How come it costs 50p more for alternative plant based milks?
Hi Aaron. Due to the cost of manufacturing dairy alternatives, there is an additional charge when this is requested in our stores. When we first introduced soya milk, there was an additional charge if a beverage was requested to be prepared this way. However, as it increased in popularity, it became free in a majority of our stores. Hopefully in the future, we’ll be able to offer all dairy alternatives for no additional cost. However, please be assured we’ll share your comments with our operations team for their attention and consideration. In the meantime, we can confirm that our Gold Level My Starbucks Rewards (MSR) customers do receive these for free in participating stores. For more information about our MSR program, please visit our website. We appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
We also asked Cafe Nero to see if they are the same as Cost and Starbucks here are the questions and answers from them:
Do you charge extra for plant based milk?
Yes we charge 40p for Oat and Coconut milk but Soya is free.
Why do you charge extra for these two milks?
The reason we charge extra for Oat and Coconut milk is because these milks are a greater expense to the company than dairy milk to buy in. Therefore, it was a business decision to charge an extra for this, as it was more important to us to make sure we had alternative milks to offer. We offer Soya milk for free as a dairy free alternative.
We decided to talk to some local stores who offer plant based milk alternatives to see what their view is and to find out if they are being charged a lot to be supplied with this milk as we assume that Starbuck and Costa being as big as they are would be able to negotiate a better price than say an independent coffee shop.
We spoke to director and founder of Morning Sunshine a coffee shop based in Warwick, UK. We asked him some questions regarding this surcharge:
Thank you for taking the time to speak to us regarding this surcharge, Firstly I’d like to ask do you have a surcharge for plant based milk alternatives?
Ashley: No we do not, the extra cost to supply plant based milk instead of dairy milk is minimal, say 20p and that’s not per drink that’s like per 2 liters of soy milk for example.
What do you think of the Costa and Starbucks plant based milk surcharge?
They’re profiting off the rising trend in people choosing a plant based alternative rather than milk, we have seen that a lot of our customers are now choosing plant based alternatives but we would never dream of charging them extra because of their lifestyle choices. The extra cost of offering this plant based milk is absorbed by ourselves and is quite frankly minimal.
Do plant based milks react the same when they are added to hot drinks as dairy milk?
No they don’t it does take extra knowledge and potentially training to know how to correctly add these milks into certain drinks as for example oat milk wont froth as much as dairy milk so when making a latte you can sometimes have trouble manipulating the milk to the texture you want but it is still possible.
Do you have any other comments?
Get creative, don’t fight the change in alternative milks, start offering creative combinations with the milks for example we offer a cinnamon latte with oat milk as the two flavours compliment each other perfectly!
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