Go Big or Go Home!
In December, 2021, we started pressuring Starbucks to stop charging extra for non-dairy milk. We knew we were swinging for the fences—targeting the world’s biggest coffee chain—but on November 7, 2024, we hit a home run!
Starbucks DROPPED its non-dairy upcharge🎉
What’s Wrong With the Non-dairy Upcharge?
Price Gouging
Big Coffee is milking its customers, not just covering its costs. This is naked price gouging, made even more despicable by the fact that it is profiting from customers’ involuntary and debilitating afflictions—from lactose intolerance to (potentially fatal) dairy allergies.
Greenwashing
All the Big Coffee chains brag about their “sustainability” initiatives, but they’re ignoring the cow in the room. The biggest obstacle to sustainable coffee is cow’s milk and other animal products on the menu.
Dietary Racism
By charging extra for non-dairy milk, Big Coffee effectively targets people of color who are disproportionately lactose-intolerant.
Price gouging (with markups as high as 800%), greenwashing, and dietary racism are serious offenses that affect the climate, communities of color, and lactose-intolerant customers who are forced to pay extra for milk that won’t make them sick.
By charging extra for non-dairy milk, Big Coffee chains rake in billions of dollars in profit while exploiting people of color and making it more difficult for *all* their customers to choose healthy, climate-friendly milk in their beverages.
That’s why Switch4Good and other collaborators decided to hold STARBUCKS and the rest of Big Coffee accountable for their hypocritical, exploitative practices.
How We Changed Starbucks’ Mind
Beginning in 2021, we launched a series of campaigns to pressure Starbucks—the world’s #1 coffee chain—to eliminate its hypocritical and racist upcharge for non-dairy milk. This is how Switch4Good pushed Starbucks to eliminate its non-dairy upcharge.
December
2021
The Justice Cup
On December 9, 2021, we launched a spoof “brandjacking” campaign, pretending to be Starbucks announcing the elimination of the non-dairy upcharge. We also claimed in “our” press release that Starbucks would add a charge for dairy-based beverages. Our hoax announcement earned global media coverage in prominent news media and business publications.
Less than three weeks later, Starbucks UK announced the elimination of the non-dairy milk upcharge, followed by Starbucks locations in France, Germany, and other European markets.
2022-
2023
Guerrilla Activism
For two very busy years, we picketed Starbucks stores throughout the Los Angeles area to expose Starbucks’ dietary racism, educating customers on the disparities between how Starbucks’ policies disproportionately affect customers of color. We engaged customers by giving them money to pay for their non-dairy upcharge. Our actions resulted in global media attention, heightened customer awareness of Starbucks’ exploitative treatment of customers of color, and growing consternation among Starbucks’ Leadership Team over the success of Switch4Good’s actions.
July
2024
Drop the Upcharge!
In July 2024, we worked with a Starbucks corporate whistleblower to expose damning evidence of Starbucks’ price gouging, greenwashing, and dietary racism. Through a series of mobile digital billboards with crushing information from the corporate informant, customer interviews in front of Starbucks locations, public actions at Starbucks’ headquarters and popular stores throughout Seattle, media coverage, and direct outreach to Starbucks C-suite and Board of Directors, we demanded they drop the non-dairy upcharge—a root cause of the company’s ethical shortcomings. Three weeks later, then-CEO Laxman Narasimhan was fired.
Within weeks of his appointment—following our direct outreach to the new leadership team—new CEO Brian Niccols eliminated the upcharge.
October 30
2024
🎉Victory!🎉
Starbucks announced it would eliminate the non-dairy upcharge in company-owned and operated stores in the US and Canada beginning November 7, 2024.
