Victory! Busboys and Poets Ends Vegan Milk Upcharge After Hearing from PETA
For Immediate Release:
June 17, 2025
Contact:
Alex Payne 202-483-7382
Mugnificent! After hearing from PETA that charging extra for vegan milk deters kind consumers who want to slash greenhouse gas emissions and leave mother cows and their calves in peace, locally based café chain Busboys and Poets swiftly ended the upcharge across all its locations—with owner Andy Shallal writing, “People using non-dairy milk substitutes shouldn’t have to subsidize factory animal production.”
“Busboys and Poets’ kind move is a win for cows, the planet, and conscientious consumers, who can now make eco- and animal-friendly choices without paying extra,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala, who corresponded with Shallal after meeting him at an event sponsored by the popular café. “One chain after another has dropped these punitive price hikes, and PETA is calling on the few remaining holdouts, like The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, to get on board with the new industry standard.”
Cows have deep maternal instincts and, like all mothers, produce milk only to feed their babies. In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly forcibly impregnated, and their calves are taken away from them within a day of birth so that the milk meant to nourish them can be stolen and sold to humans. Once their bodies wear out from repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter. In addition to causing these animals immense suffering, the dairy industry is a major producer of the greenhouse gases fueling the climate catastrophe.
Busboys and Poets joins several other chains—including Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee, Dunkin’, Dutch Bros, Blue Bottle Coffee, Panera Bread, Philz Coffee, Pret A Manger,Stumptown Coffee Roasters, and Tim Hortons—in offering dairy-free milk at no extra charge.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kitsfor people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
