The Vegan-Friendly Food You Should Never Order At Starbucks

Starbucks has a handful of vegan food items on its menu, but they aren't all worth ordering. In our taste tester's ranking of 13 vegan-friendly foods from Starbucks, they found that the avocado spread was by far the worst offering. It's a bummer because, aside from the butter and cream cheese it typically offers to spread on your bagels, your only vegan option is the avocado spread. Truthfully, however, you'll be better off eating it plain.

The main issue with the avocado spread is, really, the flavoring. To help preserve it, Starbucks' avocado spread is more than just plain avocado — including flavors like lime juice, sea salt, garlic, and a touch of spice. This makes it taste more like guacamole than anything. Of course, you could always snag a packet from the cooler to dip your Sieté chips into, but seeing as your vegan hot food options are essentially limited to bagels and oatmeal (the Impossible breakfast sandwich is actually not vegan, and you can only customize it an extent), it's kind of like spreading guacamole on bread rather than the fresh avocado you would typically use. 

Besides the guacamole-like flavor, another reason you'll want to skip Starbucks' avocado spread is the texture. Closer to a purée consistency than actual mashed avocado, the spread is too smooth and thin in texture to match up to anything like the avocado toast you make at home. 

If you don't mind the guacamole-like flavor, you can certainly order an everything bagel with the avocado spread on top – plenty of people enjoy it that way. But, if that's not your thing, you'll likely have better luck going with a plain bagel. Otherwise, your options for hot breakfast food will be pretty limited. Aside from bagels, Starbucks offers vegan-friendly oatmeal. Usually made with water, this option is already dairy-free. But one tip is to ask them to make it with one of the dairy-free milk options on the menu. With almond, soy, and oat available, any will do — oat milk, however, is likely to provide the creamiest result.

While Starbucks did, at one time, carry other vegan-friendly foods, including a chickpea protein box and strawberry overnight oats, as far as vegan eating goes, most of your options come in the form of snacks, including bagged nuts and chips, granola bars, and dried fruit strips. Our taste testers' favorite vegan-friendly food item, however, is the whole grain oatmeal. Hopefully, there will be more, savory hot menu items added in the future. Until then, you might want to head over to Dunkin' for your breakfast needs. Not only can you get an almond milk latte, but you also have options like cinnamon raisin and sesame bagels, English muffins, avocado toast, and warm hash browns.