_________ Will Be the Next Big Plant Milk

The 2010s was a roller coaster for milk trends, with oat milk ending up on top. But will oat milk retain its crown, or will we see a new plant milk ascend?

Photo by Ranch on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I asked Boss Barista’s Instagram followers two questions:

• Which milk was most popular when you started as a barista?

• Which milk was most popular when you stopped being a barista?

I was trying to establish a timeline that showed the recent evolution in milk preferences at coffee shops. For instance, when I started as a barista in 2010, the only alternative we had to dairy milk was soy milk. Even then we’d order a crate of soy milk (about nine half-gallon cartons) every week while going through 72 gallons of dairy milk in the same timeframe.

By 2019, however—my last year behind the bar—about half the drinks I made were with oat milk. Meanwhile, I watched other plant-based alternatives get their moment in the sun before flaming out: I made hundreds of almond milk lattes in 2015, for example, and there were moments when I thought rice or pistachio milk might ascend. I even worked in a cafe where one lonely container of hemp milk was hanging out in the fridge. While I’d argue soy milk never entirely went away (which makes sense—soy milk has been around for centuries, and gained mainstream popularity in the United States in the 1970s), ultimately, my barista tenure ended with oat milk at the top.

Reflecting on this evolution, it struck me as an interesting snapshot of milk preferences in the wider coffee industry. However, I wasn’t sure if my experience was unique or spoke to larger trends, so I decided to ask others.

More than 100 people responded. There are caveats, of course—most of my Instagram friends and followers are U.S.-based, and clearly this isn’t a scientific or rigorous way to collect data—but I found it fascinating that most followers’ experiences mimicked mine in some way.

All this begs the question: What will the next milk trend be? And, more broadly, what do our collective milk preferences say about our attitudes toward the things we choose to eat and drink?

The Milk Cycle

Recently, I saw a video on Instagram that suggested that milk trends partially result from diet culture. A creator named @sabrinanicoli acted out a sketch where each character rejects a given milk option for different reasons: “I don’t drink oat milk—it causes glucose spikes; I drink soy milk,” then the next character says they don’t drink soy milk because it “messes with your hormones,” eventually creating an endless, self-repeating cycle.

There’s a lot to unpack in this Reel, specifically what the creator says about diet trends and wellness. But I want to focus on the idea of trends being a cycle. @sabrinanicoli’s video is intended to be played on a loop repeatedly, which is the point: In her video, milk preferences ebb and flow in and out of vogue.  

If we were to affix our current moment to a particular point in the cycle, one could argue we’re in the waning years of the oat milk empire. As Amy McCarthy wrote for Eater, oat milk’s popularity began slipping in 2021, after enjoying near dominance in coffee shops during the late 2010s. Oatly—the brand most folks associate with oat milk—began supplying specialty shops with its product in 2017, and between 2017 and 2018, oat milk sales grew by 71%.

This timeframe seems to line up with the data I got from folks on Instagram. Nearly everyone who started making coffee before 2017 left out oat milk in their initial responses, but baristas who started making coffee even in 2018 generally reported having oat milk in their cafes.

To be clear, oat milk sales are still through the roof, and expected to grow annually (one trend-forecasting group predicts global sales of oat milk will reach $6.45 billion by 2028). But as McCarthy noted, Oatly’s reputation as the go-to oat milk brand took a hit around 2021 amid supply issues, questionable investment decisions, and unsubstantiated scientific claims. It was around this time when the milk trend cycle seemed to tick over a notch, and suddenly, New York hot girls—apparently the barometer for any zeitgeisty vibe shift—started drinking regular ol’ whole milk again.  

Emily Sundberg first reported on the return to whole milk for GrubStreet in 2021. Partially informed by a trip to Europe during which she discovered that “the real international delight, I realized, is pouring whole, full-dairy milk into your coffee,” and after stumbling across a tweet from a New York-based waitress proclaiming that “hot girls” are ordering whole milk lattes again, Sundberg began asking around. She seemed to stumble right into a world (i.e., New York City) ready to embrace whole milk again.

Sundberg found folks who proudly claimed they never ascribed to the plant milk lifestyle, believing the rotating selection of plant milks was as fleetingly trendy as the next pair of it-shoes or jeans. There’s something really interesting about how the people Sundberg talked to described their penchant for whole milk, aware that it’s somehow “on trend” to drink whole milk again but still wanting to distance themselves from the idea that others might influence their milk choices.

If I go back to the question I asked followers, we seem to be—at this moment in 2024—straddling the line between whole and oat milk. A handful of folks currently working in coffee answered that these were the only two milk options their cafes offered, in glaring contrast to my early coffee jobs, where it felt like no matter what was actually popular, we still had to carry a half-dozen different milk options (even if almost no one touched that hemp milk container).

Perhaps we really are just in the part of the cycle between oat and whole milk. But maybe there’s something else on the horizon.

Will 2025 Be the Year of Pea Milk?

The argument above assumes milk preferences are cyclical. But what if they aren’t, and we’re just waiting for another alternative milk—perhaps something we can’t even yet conceptualize—to ascend?

In Sundberg’s reporting, there seemed to be a sense of relief that it was acceptable to drink whole milk again, almost a rejection of the diet and wellness culture (one of her sources called it “this lie by what I call the Goop Industrial Complex that if you cut dairy from your diet you will have more energy, clearer skin, and you will never ever fart ever again”) that told people dairy was bad.

If this shift isn’t cyclical, maybe it’s a plea to stop with the “[INSERT PLANT MILK] is better for you” charade. Maybe the public is getting better at sniffing out bullshit, and understanding that picking food items that serve us well is much more nuanced than simply writing off one kind of milk or another as “good” or “bad.”

So, if we step away from the cycle, could some other kind of milk come along and collectively sweep us off our feet? I love pistachios, and I’d love to see pistachio milk in more cafes (I doubt it’ll happen, though, because pistachios are incredibly expensive). If sustainability is important to us—research indicates people care about the products they buy being sustainable—why hasn’t pea milk ever caught on? And cashews seem to be a popular alternative base in other dairy-free foods, so how come cashew milk never had its moment in the sun?

Context matters in forecasting where milk preferences will veer next. Oat milk happened to slide in during a time when California, which produces about 80% of the world’s almonds, was going through severe drought, and when concerns about almonds as a water-intensive crop began to grow. (In hindsight, it seems like almonds might have taken the heat for a much larger problem with water in the state.)

The decade span during which I observed all these changes in milk preferences also reflects a rapid shift in coffee culture. There are way more specialty coffee shops now than there were in 2010, so this shift in milk preferences could also be a reflection of a growing customer base. Hopefully, future milk trends will reflect the ever-increasing diversity of today’s coffee drinkers (nearly 65% of the global population is lactose-intolerant, and while oat milk is a popular alternative for people with nut allergies, not all oat milk is certified gluten-free or safe for folks suffering from celiac disease).

But we may also see new options pop up based on context: Will a shortage or abundance of something mean we’ll see a totally new product on shelves a year from now? Who knows—but whatever the case, you should share your guesses on the next big milk trend here in the comments. Come back a year from now and see if you’re right.