March 18, 2020: Clueless actor and PETA Honorary Director Alicia Silverstone joined Starbucks’ virtual annual meeting to ask the company to stop charging extra for nondairy milks.
“When will Starbucks put its money where its mouth is and remove the barrier to customers choosing climate-, health-, and animal-friendly vegan options by dropping the surcharge on nondairy milk?”
—Alicia Silverstone
March 16, 2022: PETA caused a stir during Starbucks’ annual meeting by calling out the company for being all talk and no action. We pointed out that the CEO himself—Kevin Johnson—has claimed that Starbucks wants to “give more than [it takes] from the planet,” but if that were really the case, the company would incentivize consuming animal- and environmentally friendly vegan milks by not charging extra for them.
Producing cow’s milk generates around three times more greenhouse gas emissions and uses nine times more land than vegan options do. It takes 628 liters of water to make 1 liter of cow’s milk—oat or soy milk requires 90% less water.
“Starbucks claims to value ‘challenging the status quo and … holding ourselves accountable.’ Words have to mean something.”
—From PETA’s question to Starbucks at its annual meeting
September 19, 2022: In PETA’s first-ever Starbucks shareholder resolution, we called on the company’s board of directors to commission a report examining whether the coffee chain is harming its reputation—and losing customers—by charging a premium price for the vegan milks it agrees are better for the planet.
PETA members caused a stir outside Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle to call on the chain to stop penalizing customers who care about animals and the environment.
March 23, 2023: At Starbucks’ latest virtual shareholder meeting, PETA asked four pressing questions—one of our own and three on behalf of fellow shareholders who are also passionate about ending the vegan milk upcharge.
Since Starbucks’ new CEO Laxman Narasimhan started two weeks early and led the meeting, PETA hopes he received our input with fresh urgency.
We explained how the dairy industry condemns cows exploited for their milk to a relentless cycle of forced impregnation, birth, and nearly round-the-clock milking before sending them to a gruesome death after four or five years. Then we asked, “Knowing that dairy is the product of immense suffering, environmental destruction, and dietary racism, how do you justify supporting and even actively promoting its consumption by continuing to impose an ‘ethical tax’ on vegan milks?”
Following introductory lead-in comments for each, the three other questions were read:
“When will Starbucks return to the values that made me an investor by listening to its customers, leading the coffee industry instead of lagging behind, and dropping the upcharge on vegan milks?”
“Since Starbucks has admitted that dairy is the biggest contributor to the company’s carbon footprint and is a major factor in climate change, why doesn’t Starbucks institute a dairy upcharge or, even better, drop dairy altogether?”
“Given Gen Z’s aversion to dairy, why doesn’t Starbucks make vegan milk the default option instead of charging more for it?”
During the meeting, we also presented our shareholder resolution—originally submitted in September 2022—urging the company to commission a report examining how dropping the upcharge for vegan milks could increase Starbucks’ sales.
PETA supporters with Animal Rights Initiative descended on Starbucks’ headquarters in downtown Seattle at the start of the meeting to make their position known.
April 13, 2023: After PETA submitted a shareholder resolution calling out Starbucks’ problematic vegan milk upcharge, we received enough votes from the company’s shareholders to qualify to submit another resolution in 2024. This was great news, as submitting back-to-back shareholder resolutions allows us to keep pressure on the chain.
While we won a victory in the boardroom, we also kept the heat on Starbucks by partnering with Switch4Good—a nonprofit run by Olympian Dotsie Bausch dedicated to “[d]isrupting norms around dairy and health, working to abolish dietary racial oppression, and fighting climate change”—to hold a day of action against the company.
During the action-packed day, we hosted protests across the U.S. and Canada, mobilized supporters to blast the company on social media, held sit-ins, encouraged everyone to call the company to express their opposition, and more.
September 25, 2023: In our second-ever Starbucks shareholder resolution submission, PETA pressed the company’s executives to examine the true cost of alienating consumers who can’t stomach cow’s milk for ethical, religious, environmental, or dietary reasons.
According to multiple studies, Gen Zers—whose spending power has more than doubled in three years to reach an estimated $360 billion—view cow’s milk as “basic” or “uncool.” So by charging a premium price for vegan milks, Starbucks may be harming its reputation and actually losing customers in the process.
