Oat milk squeeze to ease with New Jersey plant opening

Shortages of oat milk at U.S. coffee shops may soon be a thing of the past.

Oatly Inc. expects to begin operations at a new plant in Millville, New Jersey, later this month, according to Sara Fletcher, a spokeswoman for the Malmo, Sweden-based company. The factory will increase volume as much as tenfold.

The dairy alternative has seen shortages in the past year as baristas adopted it in upscale coffee shops, some of which couldn’t get a hold of products for weeks while others were on waiting lists. Last month, Starbucks Corp. began selling Elmhurst barista edition oat milk in five of its U.S. cafes.

Ryan Brennan, owner of Pilates + Coffee in Chicago, said his shop uses more Oatly than regular milk. But he’s struggled to secure enough to keep up with the demand. Sometimes he’d have to call around to other coffee shops, or once, when he was about to run out, he got a tip about a supplier on the other side of town, and went and loaded up his car with as much as it could carry.

“We’d buy as much of it as we were allowed to and there’d always be limits on it,” he said.

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