Reporter | Liu Yujing Edit | Zan Huifang
Since oat milk brand oatly entered the North American market in 2016 and entered the public eye with the blessing of many specialty coffee brands, oat milk coffee has gradually become a trend new option in the coffee consumer market.
Plant-based milk is sought after by more and more consumers because of its relatively low calorie and high fiber content — and now large coffee chains like Starbucks are also trying to offer more plant-based milk options.
Recently, Starbucks USA announced that it will pilot the launch of more plant-based milk products in the US and Canadian markets. More than 1,300 Starbucks in the Midwest launched oat milk coffee on a pilot basis, and two permanent new products will be available in all stores in North America: almond milk honey fu rui white, and coconut milk latte.
Starbucks' suppliers of American oat milk, like specialty coffee brands such as Intelligentsia, are Swedish brands oatly.
In March 2019, Starbucks in the U.S. began testing oat milk for the first time. At that time, five Starbucks reserve stores in Seattle, San Francisco and New York added the option of oat milk, and when ordering dairy-containing beverages such as lattes and cappuccinos, if they did not want to drink milk, consumers could choose oat milk in addition to soy milk. Earlier, the European market had been piloting oat milk options since 2018.
The advantages of oat milk compared to other plant milk are mainly in the taste, compared with soy milk, almond milk, its taste acceptance is high, in addition to the coffee with the taste will not be too bad, and more refreshing can highlight the flavor of different coffee beans.
As a result, sales of oat milk in the U.S. market have been growing over the past few years. Currently, there are more than 7,000 coffee shops in the U.S. that supply oat milk, with U.S. oat milk sales of $29 million in 2018, compared to 4.4 million in 2017. In addition, Mintel reports that the overall share of plant milk is growing, and the overall category sales of plant milk in 2018 were $2.3 billion, which means that oat milk still has a lot of room for growth. Sales of animal milk products fell by 15% during the reporting period. Concerns about animal welfare, as well as environmental protection and reduced carbon emissions, are also an important selling point for plant milk to become popular.
In the Chinese market, oat milk has also become an option for more and more coffee shops. In addition to the fact that health-conscious consumers in China are also starting to choose more oat milk coffee, oatly has also done a lot of promotion to open up the Chinese market - rather than directly promoting consumers, oatly's approach is to break into the barista community, and recruit people with coffee industry backgrounds to promote it in catering channels, especially coffee shops.
Nowadays, you can find oat milk coffee in many specialty coffee shops – for example, Manner, a famous affordable boutique coffee shop in Shanghai, uses oatly's oat milk, and in another specialty coffee shop, seesaw, oat milk coffee is also a regular option.