Semi-good news for coffee drinkers
The days of paying extra for alternative milk in your coffee is over at Wild Bean cafe but don’t expect your favourite city espresso haunt to follow their lead any time soon.
BP Australia and New Zealand took a “plant-based milk now at no extra cost” stance earlier this month as customers opting for the dairy alternatives tripled between 2017 and 2019.
Independent cafes in Hamilton, however, say “real coffee drinkers don’t go to BP” and the extra charge, sometimes as much as $1, won’t be disappearing any time soon.
General manager brand and communications at BP Asia Pacific, Leigh Taylor, said they adjusted their prices due to customer demand.
“We've seen in our stores a steady uptake from our customers as they opt for plantbased alternatives.”
Taylor couldn’t say how BP did it or the number of coffees they served every year, classing it a “commercially sensitive detail” but reiterated that price reflected demand and they were “a major retailer in that space across New Zealand”.
Whether other cafes and restaurants would follow suit is up to them, “so we’ll have to wait and see”. However, Taylor said the cafe chain has seen positive responses from customers across the country.
“The response is probably a bit like your own response ‘a lot of surprise and delight’, which is fantastic.”
Owner and manager of Kopi Café - winner of the Most Outstanding Cafe at the Waikato Hospitality Awards in 2023 - David Tourelle said about 25% of his customers go for plant-based milk, whereas a strong majority still prefer dairy milk.
Oat milk dominates alternative milk category, he said. Tourelle said his cafe “specialises in coffee” and while BP is not a competitor in that space, they still can’t compete with big corporation prices “and we don’t need to”.
“Real coffee drinkers don't go to BP.” Tourelle said the hype of plant-based milk was an “environmental thing - the fact that cows use a lot of water to make milk”.
Scotts Epicurean owner and manager Donna Ferguson shared the notion and said their place was about “pressed coffee, taste of coffee and the service of coffee”, as opposed to a service station.
The only way they could match the price of dairy and non-dairy milk was if the cost of plant-based milk went down - which is currently double the price of dairy milk,