Joaquin Phoenix turned a few heads when he railed against milk at the Oscars this week, but he’s not the only one fed up with dairy.
“We go into the natural world, and we plunder it for its resources,” he said. “Then we take [a cow’s] milk that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”
Young people, whether driven by concern for the animal kingdom or otherwise, are increasingly looking to milk alternatives to put in their coffee, from soy to almond to oat. Sales of plant-based creamers jumped more than 30% last year, with vegan and lactose intolerant coffee drinkers helping to drive the demand for dairy substitutes. Milk-based and oil-based creamers, on the other hand, only grew about 8% each.
Millennials who still enjoy dairy are changing the market too; a growing number of young people who use dairy- or oil-based creamers are interested in new, sugary flavors.
“They don’t like black coffee,” Daniel Jhung, president of Nestlé’s beverage division, told the Wall Street Journal. “They like coffee milkshakes.”
Jhung says young people use creamer more than their predecessors, many of whom still enjoy a good cup of black coffee. For the coffee milkshake drinkers, Nestlé Coffee Mate sells flavors from Cinnamon Toast Crunch to Funfetti.
There’s a cost to the syrupy sweetness, though. A serving of one of these flavors has five grams of sugar, more than one teaspoon. Silk’s original soy creamer has just one gram.
But consumers want to have their cake-flavored coffee and drink it too. Olivia Sanchez is the vice president of marketing for the creamer division of Danone, which owns the ubiquitous International Delight coffee creamers you see in coffee shops and delis. She says the Hershey’s, Peeps, and Reese’s flavors her company sells appeal to younger coffee drinkers, though not everyone prioritizes his or her sweet tooth.
“Consumers want everything,” Sanchez said. “They want flavor. But other times, they want to do better from a health standpoint.”
Whichever end of the sugar rush vs. health-conscious side of the spectrum they fall on, consumers are drinking more creamer, especially nondairy. That should make Phoenix happy.
