Oat Milk – Why we're making it in house, and you should too

DearDiary — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 16:42:25 GMT

My coffee shop switched to making all our oat milk in-house. It's great! We are the only shop in town doing it (so far), we save money, and we avoid throwing over 6,000 barista milk cartons in the landfill every year.

Oats are a cheap dry good, so why should barista oat milk cost us $12+ per gallon?! My shop goes through over 30 gallons of oat milk (10 12-carton cases) every week. Pureeing and straining that many oats is just way too messy and time consuming. So, I spent the past two years working on a powdered barista oat milk. 84 iterations later, I finally have Bricco Blends, my oat milk product.

Sure, there are other powdered oat milks on the market, but none of them make gorgeous latte art like Bricco Blends does, and they aren't available in bulk. I decided that I just want to focus on coffee shops and other food businesses, and make sure everything about Bricco Blends is designed for them. For this reason, I'm totally cool with folks using Bricco Blends in their own beverage manufacturing. Bottle it, label it, make it your own!

Here are some of the decisions I've made with small business in mind:

Use 1/6 as much storage space – A 25 lb bag of Bricco Blends replaces 94 cartons of major brand barista milks
Spend less – Bricco Blends is about $3.13 per quart when you buy it in bulk. The distributor prices are even lower. As a startup, I don't have economy of scale on my side... yet. My goal is to get oat milk prices closer to dairy milk prices
Generate new revenue – Where can folks in your town go for fresh made oat milk? You could be their source! And if you're a coffee roaster, you can sell oat milk alongside your roasts.

We make 5 gallons at a time at my shop. We just blend powder, water, and a flavor neutral oil in a keg using a paint mixer attachment for my drill. The attachment cost about $10 at a hardware store—easy peasy. The low-oxygen environment of the keg keeps the oat milk fresh for days, and pouring oat milk on tap looks super fancy.

If any of this interests you, I would love to send you a sample. Just add your business to our Early Adopter List at https://briccoblends.com

topic Oat Milk – Why we're making it in house, and you should too in Restaurant Operations

Oat Milk – Why we're making it in house, and you should too