Oat milk is frothy. In more than one way.
To start with the most important way: it really does, especially in its “barista” form, froth up like real dairy milk. That’s why — as well as the fact that it is both creamy and sweet and doesn’t separate like other plant milks — it has become so incredibly popular, despite having relatively little nutritional value .
And that takes us to the other way: the market is frothy too. And if you would allow us to really, erm, milk this, we think are several indicators that point to something of a bubble (you know those tiny little air pockets that work together to form the froth) forming in oatmilkland.
First, The Celebrities have got involved. In July Sweden’s Oatly, one of the leading oat milk makers, raised $200m — at a valuation of $2bn — from investors including not just “Trump-linked Blackstone” (as The Guardian put it in their headline ), but also Oprah Winfrey, Jay Z’s Roc Nation and, really quite strangely, Natalie Portman.
Other hot investment trends The Celebrities have got involved in over recent years include cannabis and ICOs . See what we’re saying?
Second, we are noticing hyperbole , exponential projections , talk of udder disruption (no really we didn’t even make that up ) and, yes, horrible charts.
Here is GM Insights — a market research company — projecting what will happen to the oat milk market over the coming six years in its recent “Oat Milk Market Share Statistics 2020-2026” report:
What . . . is that? A snail caught in a spider web? When did people get so down on bar charts? How many millions of dollars are those unlabelled webbed lines meant to represent? And just why? (If you want access to the full report you can have it, for as little as $5,150!)
Third, heated discussions about oat milk have reached the FT Letters pages. In a recent column Henry Mance dared to claim that “oat milk is milk”. No it’s not ; it’s “highly processed and is actually mostly water”, said Susie Bell in Cornwall! Well actually milk is also mainly water so what’s your point, said Michael Rivelin in South Yorkshire (or something like that). “ This argument was not the cream of the crop ,” he finished.
Fourth, and finally, when this Alphavillain tried to buy a decaff Americano with extra-hot frothed oat milk (don’t @ me) last week, she was told that the boutique coffee shop she was trying to buy it from had sold out of the stuff! The horror.
So there you have it. This is actually not nuts, it’s oats, but nevertheless, when’s the crash?
Related links: Oatly’s Path to Alt‑Milk World Domination Starts in New Jersey - Bloomberg Businessweek