Lawsuit accuses cafés of charging for non-dairy
A Montreal lawyer plans to sue Starbucks, Tim Hortons and Second Cup over charging more for non-dairy options in their coffee. Once he succeeds, let’s sue restaurants for charging more for a steak than a hamburger. Also as reported by CTV.
Mark Côté 10:54 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
According to the article, in at least 3 provinces, nondairy milks are less expensive than dairy, so, if that is indeed factual, it would be more accurate to say “let’s sue restaurants for charging more for a hamburger than a steak” which makes a bit more sense.
(A quick search of metro.ca indicates that oat milk is very slightly more expensive than cow milk, but it’s hard to say exactly since the container sizes are different, and these are of course consumer prices.)
The confusing part for me is the timeline, with at least two of the three of these companies apparently having ditched the extra fee before the lawsuit was launched. Maybe the lawsuit was anticipated?
Kate 11:16 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
The other milks may involve extra effort to find a supply, and don’t respond like regular milk, so although they may be no more expensive on the charge sheet, they mean more training, more cleaning, separate equipment, separate storage and generally more trouble.
Nobody should be diluting their coffee with goopy white stuff, anyway, whether from a cow or anything else. I have spoken.
Chris 11:23 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
My first reaction is the same: different product, different price. Free market. Seller chooses their prices. Buyer chooses to agree, or not buy.
But is soy/oat actually more expensive than cow? A quick search at metro.ca:
1) cow: 5.49 / 2 L = 0.27 / 100 mL.
2) soy: 5.99 for 1.89 L = 0.31 / 100 mL
3) oat: 4.99 for 1.75 L = 0.29 / 100 mL
In other words, they are all basically the same price. So one could make a left wing argument that this is like the “pink tax” but on vegetarians instead of on women. One could argue vegetarians are a minority, and discriminated against. One could even try to invent a word like “vegaphobia” to try and smear people that disagree. Oh wait, I didn’t just invent it! There’s a wikipedia article already! Damn, I learned a new word today.
Chris 11:49 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
Doh, my message crossed with Mark’s, I think it got into a moderation queue due to having multiple links. Funny that both our minds went to metro.ca. I guess we see it on a lot of trucks.
Meezly 11:53 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
The hamburger and steak comparison doesn’t make sense. It’s not about the extra effort to provide non-dairy choices to a customer or how much milk costs. There is no reason for a large coffee chain to charge extra for oat milk other than to find an excuse to make more profit.
Don’t we wanna to stick it to big corporations like Starbucks and Tim Hortons (which is now owned by Burger King)? If he wins, this would actually set a good precedent.
Kate 11:57 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
Meezly, I suppose you’re right about the profit motive. I just saw it from the point of view of someone demanding that their minority request should be catered to.
Joey 12:13 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
Three things.
One, @Meezly, I think we’re worse off if we decide that we should rely on the justice system to set non-dairy milk prices, even if it ostensibly fucks the man or whatever. Non-dairy milks are, I assume, still a niche product, and almost by definition niche products cost more. Nobody is being forced to buy these drinks, the prices of the products are not being hidden, customers aren’t being misled, and there are lots of alternatives (to Kate’s point, nobody “needs” milk in their coffee to make it drinkable). We are not talking about pharmaceuticals or basic necessities, we are talking about the cost of lattes.
Two, @Chris and @Mark – coffeeshops don’t buy milk at retail stores, they buy it from wholesale distributors, so looking at unit-level prices at grocery stores isn’t definitive. More importantly, if a majority of drinks use dairy milk and the rest are split among the non-dairy options, the acquisition cost of dairy will be considerably lower given economies of scale. If you are buying 100L of dairy milk per week and only 10L of oat milk, you will wind up paying more for oat milk and should quite reasonably can pass that cost along to your customers (so, yes, there is indeed a legit reason for coffeeshops to charge more for products that, per-unit, cost more to acquire).
Three, confounding all this is our dairy supply management. It would be amusing if some bogus class-action lawsuit led to the end of this long-standing policy.
Anyway, the real scam is charging $1 for the 75mL of steamed milk that goes in your cappuccino, when a litre costs bout $2.50 (and that price is already propped up by supply management!).
Meezly 12:53 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
Fair points, but I would beg to differ that non-dairy milk is a niche or minority market. Non-dairy coffee orders comprise ~30% of sales! Has anyone seen the non-dairy section at any supermarket lately? It’s sometimes larger than the dairy milk section! The plant milk industry is huge now. I like dairy, but cow’s milk is just not cool anymore.
DeWolf 13:10 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
There’s at least one specialty coffee chain, Paquebot — four locations in Montreal and one in Gaspé — that now uses oat milk as the standard. You need to specifically request lait de vache if you want dairy milk.
Granted a small specialty chain is a very different scale of operations than Starbucks or Timmy’s, but Paquebot isn’t a vegan business and they wouldn’t have made that choice if it didn’t make economic sense.
MarcG 13:19 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
The non-dairy milks used in coffee-making are not the standard ones for drinking, you need the speciality “barista” style ones that are designed to “steam, stretch, and foam in a latte” which are more expensive.
Nicholas 13:27 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
Chris, just a side note, who is paying retail for Lactancia, a premium milk that’s thus allowed to be sold for more than the maximum price? The price of 2 L of 2% is a maximum of $4.45, and all big grocery stores sell it for the minimum $4.11 (and they’d be buying it at the cheaper 4 L rate anyway).
dwgs 13:31 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
@MarcG that may be true for a cappuccino where you need stiff foam but in our house we use either 2% dairy or Nature’s Own regular plain oat milk and the oat milk makes a very nice latte without the oils and other things added to the ‘barista’ types.
pop 13:38 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
plant-based milk is more expensive because the dairy industry is subsidized by the government. milk should be many times as expensive if they had to pay for the environmental damage they cause and provide proper living conditions to the cows instead of having them restrained in cages where they spent most of their life being raped, giving birth, and having their calves taken away (until they are too old and get transferred to the slaughter house)
David S 13:53 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
Kate: you’ve obviously never had a delicious macchiato 😉 and I’d recommend oat milk with it, which I feel simultaneously brings out the flavour of the coffee and reduces the acidity as opposed to regular coffee that just drowns the taste. But I admit that I also drink my coffee black when I make it at home.
Chris: it’s not just about veganism. I would even wager that the majority of people order vegan milk because of lactose reactions, although I may be biased by the people that I go to coffee shops with.
Kate 15:09 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
David S, a little while ago a new barista dabbed some milk into my double short espresso – without my asking – and it totally changed the texture. It was more like drinking melted ice cream than a proper coffee. I don’t like milk, whether it’s got from milking cows or tiny little soybeans. I rarely act the Karen, but I asked him to make me a new one, without additions.
There are all kinds of inequities involved here. I’m subscribed to Lufa, which has a selection of what they call “plant‑based alternatives” which, in many cases, are more expensive than the equivalent foods from animal sources. Things like vegan sausages and vegan cheese are expensive and, in most cases I suspect, ultra processed too. Would it only be “fair” if the cashew‑based cheese was kept to the same price as standard cheddar?
Also, and this just occurred to me, given that the dairy industry is so heavily subsidized, why is cheese so damn expensive here?
Joey 17:29 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
@kate because we don’t subsidize dairy farmers directly, we establish quotas and price floors etc and restrict imports to keep prices artificially high
Nicholas 18:43 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
What Joey said. Canada has some of the highest dairy prices in the world.
Blork 19:31 on 2025-01-09 Permalink
A few points, some of which have already been touched on I think:
Regarding prices, it’s not fair to look at supermarket prices as a basis of comparison. When buying in bulk the economies are different, and it’s likely that there’s more bulk advantage on the cow milk than on the plant milk just because of quantity differences.
While it might be mean or nasty for those places to charge more for plant milk, I don’t see how that’s a legal issue. If a pizzeria sells 100 cow-cheese pizzas for every one plant-cheese pizza, nobody blinks that the plant cheese pizza costs an extra dollar. It’s a different product. That said, these cafes would do well to recognize that plant based milk is becoming less niche, and there’s a market advantage to them to not make it seem like a fussy and more expensive option. But again, more of a marketing issue than a legal one.
Dairy is bad for the environment, but so are some plant-based milks. Specifically almond milk, which takes rivers and rivers of water to create enough almonds to whiten a coffee. (That’s part of the reason why almond milk is largely falling out of favour among the non-dairly people.)
I haven’t tried oat milk. I’ve tried almond milk and rice milk and disliked the taste of both and didn’t like all the weird ingredients and shitty oils they use. Is oat milk any better?
dwgs 09:27 on 2025-01-10 Permalink
In answer to your question Blork, yes it is. I too don’t care for rice, soy, almond, whatever ‘milk’ but to my surprise when I tried oat milk I actually liked it. My son likes 2%, my partner can’t digest lactose so it’s oat milk for her and I do a 50/50 mix when I make a latte for myself. I will even drink a glass of oat milk straight up, something I’d never do with any other milk substitute.
MarcG 09:43 on 2025-01-10 Permalink
I agree that oat milk tastes good but it does contain the miscellaneous gums.
nau 10:30 on 2025-01-10 Permalink
Of course, some people have an intolerance to proteins in oats called avenins, so if you always feel off after oatmeal porridge (or oatmeal stout, I suppose, though depending on how many one has, it may be hard to say it’s the oat proteins that are to blame), the same may happen with oat milk.
CE 10:55 on 2025-01-10 Permalink
Oat milk is by far the superior milk substitute. I’m surprised that the other milk alternatives are still holding on.
jeather 12:17 on 2025-01-10 Permalink
To each their own but I have tried oat, almond, hazelnut and soy, and the only one I’ve enjoyed is soy. I like regular dairy milk too though.
JP 02:51 on 2025-01-11 Permalink
My preferred options for a latte are the lactose-free version of dairy milk and oat milk. I’ve been meaning to try pistachio milk which I’ve also heard good things about.
GC 10:37 on 2025-01-11 Permalink
I really enjoy pistachio milk in my matcha lattes that I make at home. There aren’t a lot of stores that carry it, though.
Orr 19:50 on 2025-01-11 Permalink
@Nicolas. It is true that Lactantia charges a premium price, but I dispute that Lactantia is “premium milk” bc, as they put it, “Lactantia® PūrFiltre milk, every drop of milk is carefully filtered to provide a smooth, pure taste that stays fresher longer than pasteurized milk* – naturally.” which in my mind it means the main advantage is to the milk sellers, because its shelf life is longer. For the consumer tho the fact is you are in fact getting older, less fresh milk. That’s not premium in my mind.
The anti Dairy supply management has been run by corporate interests for a few decades now. if we cancel dairy supply management the alternative is lower cost of milk at the supermarket, but at the same time it means adopting some form of direct farm subsidy. So in order to give a tiny increase in profit to Loblaws and middlemen like Saputo, the taxpayer will have to make up the difference. A sterling example of “privatize the profits, socialize the costs”. Diary supply management has stabilized Quebec and Ontario dairy regions for many decades with zero direct subsidy from the gov’t. Without it our rural regions farm bankruptcies with skyrocket, (see: USA) and most likely turn into poverty zones. Then the opportunity for additional corporate concentration over the food supply chain is inevitable, and we’ll see things like 4000-caw dairy factories, bc the term farm is inaccurate to describe these places. Are you ready for a coca-cola company subsidiary being the company that produces your milk? That’s the end game, the Fraser Institute is playing the long game, and their funding for this PR campaign, unsurprisingly, never dries up.