Starbucks announced this week that starting Nov. 7, stores in the U.S. and Canada will reduce surcharges on plant-based milks — including oat, soy, almond and coconut — that add 70 to 80 cents to the price of a drink.
It’s a change that plant-based food advocates have long called for, citing the dire animal welfare and climate impacts of the dairy industry. By 2022, Succession actor James Cromwell — in collaboration with PETA — super glued himself to a Starbucks counter in New York City in protest of the higher costs.
In 2022, actor James Cromwell taped himself to a Starbucks counter in protest against the abolition of plant-based milk.PETA
The news comes as the coffee giant tries to win back customers after a… marked drop in the turnover of the past year. Some customers are leaving because of inflation, “rejecting $8 lattes, while others are boycotting the chain for various reasons,” the paper said. New York Times (including the war in Gaza and union fraud, although it is unclear how much impact that has had on Starbucks’ operations). The plant milk allowance did not help. In the US around a quarter of Starbucks drinks that contain milk are ordered with plant-based milk, according to 2021 data, and the surcharge adds much more to the cost of a drink for the customer than the actual cost of the plant-based milk to Starbucks.
According to Switch4Gooda non-profit organization that advocates the abolition of dairy and has long opposed the surcharge for plant-based milk, costs Starbucks charges between 9 and 28 cents extra to make a drink with soy, almond or oat milk. This means that the extra surcharge of 70 to 80 cents can amount to a markup of more than 700 percent, depending on the milk alternative. A Starbucks spokesperson told Vox that the decision to drop the surcharge was made for the benefit of customers, but did not answer questions about Switch4Good’s analysis.
So has the company sued for the increase on the grounds of discrimination, because about a third of Americans – disproportionately people of color – have difficulty digesting lactose, a sugar found in milk.
While changing course on plant-based milk increases was primarily a business decision, it could also be a milestone in the development of the food industry. Efforts to combat climate change have stalledgiven the large ecological footprint of milk. The move will also help further mainstream dairy-free milk, a more humane and sustainable alternative to conventional dairy, during what has otherwise been a turbulent year for the plant-based food market.
Starbucks’ new policy is of great importance for the climate
Cow’s milk production comes at an excessive social and environmental cost compared to plant-based milk – costs that are not priced into what consumers pay for dairy, which benefits from a range of government subsidies designed to make animal products cheap and plentiful.
First, there is animal abuse. The dairy business model depends on it artificial insemination of cows and separating them from their calves at birth so that people can take their milk. The calves are typically forced to live alone in small enclosures, while dairy cows are kept in large, industrial barns little to no time in the pasture.
After several cycles of pregnancy and birth, when a dairy cow’s milk productivity declines, she is typically sent to slaughter.
Dairy cows in milking parlors on a large farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.Robert J. Polett/Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Calves on a dairy farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley region are confined to small pens.Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
More important for Starbucks, however, is greenhouse gas emissions from milkaccounting for more than a fifth of the company’s global carbon footprint. Dairy production is devouring dramatically more land and waterand contributes far more to greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution than plant-based alternatives. Climate scientists agree that reducing dairy and meat consumption in rich countries is a necessary part of climate mitigation.
Starbucks has committed to this to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030and expanding it plant-based menu options is an important part of that goal. Eliminating the surcharge for plant-based milk, a Starbucks spokesperson said in a statement, also contributes to the company’s sustainability plans.
As of 2023, the coffee chain had made it minimal progress towards reducing the ecological footprint; total emissions were up from the 2019 baseline, in part because cow’s milk emissions were up 8 percent over that period. Starbucks is such a large consumer of milk that emissions from dairy products across all its global operations equal approx 2 percent of the emissions from all US dairy production.
Food companies do are struggling to reduce their emissions because most of their menus revolve around meat and dairy, the most carbon-intensive foods. Starbucks’ decision to drop the dairy-free surcharge should help. Substituting non-dairy milk is already Starbucks’ second most requested drink modification, according to the company, so the change could encourage even more customers to go dairy-free. It could also encourage other chains to follow suit.
What the change at Starbucks could mean for the future of plant-based dairy
This move represents a rare victory in recent years for the U.S. plant-based food industry. After a meteoric rise in the late 2010s – when Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers went mainstream and Oatly became the IT milk of baristas and consumers alike – the sector has been reeling ever since. A number of fast food chains have done so dropped plant-based burgers from their menu, while the livestock industry has attacked plant-based startups. Shoppers have opted for cheaper animal products due to high inflation.
However, plant-based milks have managed to weather the plant-based adversity better than most; from 2021 to 2023, turnover increased by 9 percentgood for almost 15 percent of total milk sales (although the number of non-dairy milk units decreased). Meanwhile, sales of plant-based meat fell by an estimated 13 percent during the same period.
Given Starbucks’ size and influence, dairy-free milk’s market share could continue to grow — and cow’s milk sales, which have been declining for decades, could continue to decline.
However, Starbucks’ policy change is more than just a sign of plant-based milk’s staying power; it also shows the potential of the plant-based and anti-factory farming movements to put sustained pressure on companies and deliver results.
PETA and Switch4Good have been calling on the company for years to drop the surcharge. Although Starbucks says the change was a business decision, the protests, celebrity endorsements and petitions likely helped spread the idea that charging more for plant-based options was unfair. And while there were sometimes protests ridiculed Much like the work of whiny vegans angry about a 70 cent surcharge, the successful campaign will now mainly benefit Starbucks’ millions of non-vegan customers who only enjoy plant-based milk or need it due to lactose intolerance (and of course the factory farmed cows and the climate).
“This move follows a vigorous five-year campaign, letters from more than 160,000 PETA supporters, protests at Starbucks across the country and help from actor James Cromwell… as well as a call from Sir Paul McCartney,” read a statement from PETA. PETA paused its campaign in September to give Starbucks’ new CEO Brian Niccol time to “make the right decision,” the organization said. “And he delivered.”
PETA protested Starbucks’ plant-based milk surcharge for years before the company decided to drop it.PETA
If Starbucks wanted to, it could go even further by making plant-based milk the default option for its milky drinks. In 2022, Blue Bottle, a Nestlé luxury coffee chain with around 100 locations around the world, announced that it oat milk the standard milk in beverage orders at U.S. locations as part of a larger effort to reduce carbon emissions. If a Blue Bottle customer wants cow’s milk, they have to ask for it, but most don’t; a few months after the switch, Blue Bottle reported that 63 percent of customers stuck with oat milk.
Blue Bottle’s approach, that other food companies have also embraced, shows how strongly our food choices are influenced by our food environment. Small changes – from lowering fees to changing default options – can nudge us towards a more climate-friendly future. Starbucks is the latest and largest company to put conventional dairy and plant-based milk on a level playing field. Others should follow.
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Swati Sharma
Vox editor-in-chief