Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Oh I forgot about StarBucks. We have indie coffee places - they all charge for soy milk, I find that SBs staff (if they get to know you) comp things like espresso shots & soy milk. I have been to coffee joints that cater to vegans & they even charge for non dairy milk.

Not that I get there all the time cause it's out of my way and on the other side of the city. But Philly has a vegan coffee shop that offers soy milk, soy creamer, almond milk, coconut creamer, and a few other options for free. It's kind of freaking awesome!

Other than that I only know of one other place that has it out for free. Everywhere else charges for it.

Does anyone have a dunkin donuts that has soy? I'm not really a fan of their coffee but I stopped at one while I was on the road one time and when I asked for soy milk they were so confused. None of the D&D's around here carry soy milk at all! And I don't think WaWa does either, but they aren't everywhere.

Oh no, there is a Dunkin' D's on every corner here and there is no soy. It would make things a lot easier! The only coffee anywhere near my work is DD's or Honey Dew, so if I think I might want coffee I have to remember to bring soy creamer and keep it in the work fridge.

Starbucks shouldn't charge you for soy if it's to add to a regular coffee or espresso. I get three shots over ice with soy, and they don't charge. I think it's just for lattes and fraps and whatnot. (But sometimes the person at the register does not know this). I've gotten way better about reloading my SB's card since I got the app on my phone, so I always get it free anyway.

I am totally using this line next time a family member askes me to pick the animal out of my food.

it drives me nuts that a lot of people dont consider chicken stock to be "meat" since there are no visible chunks.

turn it around the other way and if we, as vegans, were like "oh it's just chicken stock no biggie" and ate it then we would be called hypocrites (which we would be) but if we refuse to eat chicken stock then we are picky! ahhhh!!!
you cant win ;-)

yeah DD definitely doesnt carry soy milk. and i must live near where you do in MA cause all we have here is DD and Honey Dew as well.

i keep soy creamer in the fridge at work in case i get an iced coffee or something on my lunch break

i feel like at this point, dunkin' must be taking a deliberate and hard stand against non-dairy options. i mean, given that there is one on every corner, you have to assume they've got it in the budget to stock a quart or two of soy.

I started to tell my mom about the vegan junk food thread on here (which is totally evil and awesome and about to rock my world, btw) and she interrupted, "Vegan junk food? What, do you suck on rocks?" Yup. That's it exactly, Mom.

And I hate when my sister, who is paleo, makes smarmy comments about "all the carbs" I'm eating and that I probably need more protein.

The thing that bugs me the most is people thinking a little bit of meat/dairy doesn't matter. They seem to think since I'm a new vegan, it isn't a big deal if I "have a treat". They're always like "But you used to eat this all the time..." or "It's just got chicken stock/ egg whites/ butter".

And when people ask me if what I'm eating is vegan or "tofu food" and I concede? They make faces, say "Ewww," and go on like fools. I don't do that when they're eating a forking steak in front of me! Why should my veganess bar me from being treated politely?!

Dunkin Donuts is a system of franchises, that are really cheap to buy into (which is why so many recent immigrants can get them), and they end up having very thin profit margins at the franchise level. Its a bit like Subway, where the franchisee ends up having to work 60+hours to just break even (see Fast Food Nation for more), while the main company controls a lot of the branding and marketing and always does well because they have a fixed stream of income coming in from the franchisees.

So yes, on a corporate level, DD can probably afford soymilk, but it may be that on a franchisee level that is not feasible to implement.... I know DD in Japan has soymilk, so it probably is corporate policy not to make it available in the US, but I am not sure why that is.

I see so many people drinking soy at SBux, it seems like a good money maker for them!

oh, also, don't tell me that my "choice" to eat soy is burning down the rainforest. You want to talk rainforest, I will be happy to back you into a corner and tell you all about why the rainforest is being cleared. It's for your frigging leather seats and cheap meat sent to Russia and for soy that goes into those chicken nuggets along with pink slime.

Tim Horton's coffee is everywhere here, I mean everywhere, and none that I know of carry soy milk. Plain soy milk here can be had for the same price as cow milk. Lots of people are lactose intolerant or allergic to milk so it's not only the vegans they would make happy but instead they seem to be focussing more and more on crappy lunch and breakfast offerings.

When I occasionally get a macchiato or latte at one of the independent cafes they don't charge extra and they use the So Nice Barista blend which I know is more expensive than cow milk.

I used to work at Dunkin' Donuts and I was told that they tried soy milk out in the past and it didn't hit off so they haven't done it again. I just kind of stared at my boss when he said that.

Yeah I got charged the other day for asking for soy milk to put in my iced coffee. Seriously? Not going back to that coffee shop. I used to be a barista and we never charged when people didn't get it as the base of their drink. I have one local coffee shop where they keep soy milk in a carafe and I'm only going there from now on!

Also I remember sophomore year of high school I went on a vacation with my friends and one of their families during Easter. They got me a package of tofu. Like, they didn't even cook it or anything. I had to eat this tofu from right out of the package and pretend it was great. I would have been happy with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

there is another vegetarian where i work and when i was a regular veg before i went vegan i remember at a birthday lunch we were having she was picking pasta and broccoli out of a chicken/broccoli/ziti dish and looked at me and was like "you're not one of THOSE vegetarians who wont eat things that touched meat are you?"

and i was like "omg yes i am barf! im not eating that!"

im guessing she is a veg for health reasons because she also runs almost everyday at lunch and is into health food and has never mentioned a word about animals ever so im thinking the whole "cooked with meat" might not be as big an issue if you are veg for health reasons.

i get nervous when im in like an airport or something and get a regular coffee at a starbucks (instead of fancy coffee) and ask for soy milk (i usually do it after i pay bwahahahaa). so far no one has made me pay for it. they probably should because i dump a shitload in! ;-)

but seriously SB should not charge for soymilk it's so pervasive there. i could understand some other places where they dont use it as much but its soooo commonly used at SB

Most soy is fed to farm animals anyway, right? I'm always confused by people saying, "But soy is so bad for the environment!" Yeah... so quit eating the animals that we feed it to already.

How familiar were they with tofu? Maybe they didn't realize people usually cook it?

OH MY GOSH!

Yeah, but the other thing? They couldn't care less about the rain forests. They're just trying to score points. Because they suck.

Oh man, this reminds me of something that happened to me when I was about the same age. I had just started being a vegetarian and I went to visit my mother's extended family. None of them really had a clue about what vegetarians ate (nor was I an expert at that point, but that's another matter). My uncle was hosting a BBQ and got wind of the fact that I wasn't eating meat, so he went to the supermarket and bought a big ol' block of firm tofu because he knew that's what vegetarians ate. When I got to the cookout he was like "Look! I got you tofu because you don't eat meat!" and pointed to the hunk of tofu, which was left as one big, un-pressed chunk, sort of half-assedly sizzling on the grill. He then scooped it onto a plate and drenched it in BBQ sauce, handing it to me with a smile. "I'm not sure if it's done but here you go!"

It was really nice of him to try to make something vegetarian, especially since my other family members were being sort of unsupportive at the time, so I didn't say a word and ate my lukewarm glob of tofu covered in cold salty sauce with a smile.

this. whenever i hear this my response is always, "no, you CAN give up cheese, you just choose not to. there's a difference." it usually stops 'em right there.

also this:



i'm not a jerk about it when people are eating animal products, so why can't they show a little tolerance too?

**sigh**

Back to the displeasure at the plain garden salad as a "vegan option" at restaurants thing... I've had various relatives/coworkers/etc. say "But that's when you like!" when I try to search for something else on the menu that might work. Yeah, I do like salad. When it's made with beans or tempeh and other veggies/grains that actually make it more like a complete meal.

So true.

One of my facebook friends posted an article the other day that basically argued that being vegetarian wasn't all that environmentally friendly because of the food miles, and that a locavore diet was better. I'm always suspicious of these arguments, because they're usually given by someone not eating this hypothetically wonderful-for-the-planet diet in which all food items comes from the farm down the street. Seriously, does anyone manage to eat only local food? And how much $$ does it cost?

But yeah, people putting forth this argument seldom seem to really care about the environment... they just need to attack vegetarianism in some way.

quark - there was a link to a report that i think Mollyjade posted a few months back. basically, veganism beats locavore by like 9%. the waste/pollution isn't in the transportation - it's mostly in production. i'm gonna try and find that thread....

edited to add - i found it: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18113