Vegan cafe owner hits back after customer says they were 'forced' to drink oat milk coffee

Whether you're a fan of a full-cream flat white, a coconut latte or a coffee with no milk at all, most cafes these days cater to the various milk preferences of different customers. 

But one UK cafe has been forced to defend itself after being left a one-star TripAdvisor review by a customer furious at being "forced" to drink an oat milk coffee. 

"A coffee shop that doesn't have normal milk? Very weird experience," the now-deleted review read. 

"It says 'vegan friendly' but is just vegan. I was forced to have an oat milk cappuccino. It tasted like porridge." 

According to Metro, cafe owner Steve Clark didn't take the review lying down.  

Posting a screenshot of the review to the cafe's Instagram page, he wrote a blistering response to the unhappy dairy-lover, telling them they chose to "step into a fully vegan cafe".

"We make no apologies for this, it's a huge part of our ethical stance," Clark wrote. 

"You'd have been asked if you preferred oat milk or soya milk. You could have left at that point, but instead, you allowed us to 'force' you to drink a cappuccino that you didn't like.

"For reasons unknown to us, you didn't say anything to the staff at the time (we'd likely not have billed you) but you chose to sign up to TripAdvisor to relay the horrors of your experience to the world with your one-star review. 

"You've put a broad smile on all of our faces. We love a keyboard warrior, and we hope we didn't hurt you when we forced that coffee down your brass neck."

Captioned, "you can't win 'em all", the post soon racked up over 3000 likes from amused customers and fellow vegans alike. 

"I like the way this is positioned as if you held them at gunpoint until they drank the oat milk," one person wrote. 

"Next time I'm in London, can you please force me to eat vegan mac and cheese? Thanks," another joked. 

"Please force one down my neck, it sounds delicious," added another. 

Clark told UK newspaper Metro he thought the reviewer was just "vegan baiting", and said while his response to the review "wasn't as kind as it could have been", he was just fed up with "keyboard warriors". 

"We don't know who it was, it's just quite disappointing. We try to run on kindness," he said. 

"We're a non-profit social enterprise, some of our team have learning disabilities, we work really hard to try and get things right."