Dear Coffee Shops: A Note About Your Soy Milk Behavior
Dear coffee shops (big chains and small locals alike, except for you, Dunkin Donuts, because you refuse to offer soy milk at all):
I, and many other vegans and lactose intolerant folks, genuinely appreciate you offering soy milk for our guilty pleasure iced latte fix. However, there are a few concerns that I would like to address with you.
1. Why must we pay an additional fee for choosing soy milk? Sure it’s a little more expensive, but only about $2 more per gallon if you bought it from the store and I am sure that you can get better deals that Average Jane. You charge about 50 cents for around 10 ounces. Now I am not doing exact math here, but that is about $10 in extra fees per gallon of soy milk. That is quite the mark up!
2. Can you please teach your baristas the importance of shaking the soy milk often? Before each use would be preferable. I don’t know about others, but I am not a big fan of the chalky taste and texture that soy milk develops when it is not given a good shake once in awhile. Seeing as how you are charging us extra for it, I don’t think it is too much to ask to get a chalk-free latte. Perhaps you could reinvest all that extra soy milk money into a brief memo to all of your employees: “shake the soy milk, please.” Would that be so hard?
But again, I would like to stress that, although it may not seem like it, I do highly appreciate you carrying soy milk.
Sincerely,
Sally, the only slightly disgruntled vegan
July 18th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
AMEN! I really hadn’t even worked the math on my latte with soy milk, but this is brilliant. Our babysitter is one of the baristas at the local coffee shop (and so is her boyfriend). I’ll have to forward this on to her. Thanks!
~Shaye
July 19th, 2009 at 9:08 am
And when making a hot latte, the soy milk should be heated at a different temperature than regular milk. I don’t know what temp off the top of my head but a friend of mine from starbucks did mention this fact to me.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:22 am
140 degrees….otherwise it scalds the milk. regular milk is generally heated to about 160. and another thing i like to stress to baristas: put it BACK in the fridge when you are done!
July 21st, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Just to be a bit of a nay-sayer… the 50 cents is understandable.
Based off there normal pricing for a latte, starbucks claims to make about 25 cents profit (after importing/roasting beans, milk, cup, labor, overhead, etc). The only thing that would change for a soy drink, obviously is the milk.
As you said soy milk is about $2 more expensive for a gallon. So… for a cold 10 ounces that’s 12.8 cents more it costs to make(vs the 50 cents)… marked up about 400%. But 10 ounces would really only be for the “tall” or “small” drink, vs 20 ounces for a “venti” or “large”, which would in turn cost 25.6 cents more to make and is less than a 100% markup, which in terms of retail is normal, if not cheap.
That’s the cold price though… iced lattes. It gets more interesting though when you talk about hot drinks. Because of the types of fats in soy milk vs the fats in regular milk, it is less condusive for foaming. Because of this when creating a hot drink the amount of regular milk used (cold weight) would be less than the amount of soy milk used to create the same drink. So for a hot drink this would then in turn reduce the cost mark-up quite a bit… for a cost markup that is already somewhat reasonable for retail.
I agree that at first glance the cost seems ridiculous, but in reality in terms of retail, it is actually rather reasonable.
I think that as vegetarians/vegans or as someone who is “socially responsible” we need to remind ourselves that it is not free to make a difference, otherwise it would be the norm. We need to be willing to go out of our way and pay a little extra to lead a non-normal lifestyle where the center of what we are discussing is based around a profit-driven market.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:23 pm
but yeah… they need to learn to make the drinks right. Burnt soy tastes like crap.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
all milk should be kept cold - not just soy. And soy costs more, so you should be charged more! Prime rib costs more than chuck steak, and I dont bitch at my butcher! It is what it is….