How Oatly Turned $640M Revenue Into a $200M Loss
The rise, hype and unraveling of the brand that made oat milk a lifestyle.
Let’s rewind to the early 2010s.
Plant-based milk was still that sad soy drink at the back of your friend’s vegan fridge. Oat milk? Not even on the radar. And then came a tiny Swedish company with an unhinged marketing department, a war declaration against cows, and a mission to turn breakfast into activism.
They called it Oatly.
Within a few years, they turned bland beige liquid into a billion-dollar brand — and got sued, praised, canceled, and copied along the way. They raised millions, went public, ran ads during the Super Bowl… and somehow, still lost money on almost every carton.
This is the story of how Oatly broke the rules, broke into your fridge and almost broke itself doing it.
Small Spoiler: It wasn’t the cows that took them down. It was the spreadsheets.
What this chart tells you: More money coming in, but even more going out. Oatly scaled up quickly, but burned through cash even faster.
It all started with a vending machine in Japan
The Oatly story begins in 1985, not in San Francisco but at a food science conference in Japan. A Swedish chemist named Rickard Öste tries to buy a drink from a vending machine and has a eureka moment.
Back home, he gets to work on a plant-based milk. Soy? Too many allergies. Rye? Tastes like liquid bread. Barley? Great for beer, terrible for lattes.
Then he lands on oats.
The first versions? Kind of disgusting. Think oatmeal water with an identity crisis.
But Öste is a nerd in the best way — he keeps tinkering. Eventually, he finds the magic: oats + water + enzymes = creamy, slightly sweet, highly marketable oat milk.
In 1994, he launches a company: Oatly.
There’s just one problem. He’s a brilliant scientist — but not exactly a branding guru. The early packaging looked like something you’d find in a health food store run by monks.
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Then came Tony…
Fast forward to 2012. Oatly is selling okay, but nowhere near changing the world. So they bring in a new CEO: Toni Petersson.
Imagine a guy who used to run nightclubs and sell Costa Rican real estate. Charismatic. Weird. Not your average corporate suit.
His first big move? Go to war. Against milk.
In 2014, Oatly prints this line on its packaging: It’s like milk, but made for humans. The Swedish dairy industry loses its mind. Oatly gets sued. Loses. Can’t even use the word “milk” anymore.
So what do they do?
They publish the lawsuit.
Suddenly, the whole country is talking about oat milk. Sales skyrocket. Oatly realizes: they’re not just selling a drink. They’re selling a fight. Milk = bad. Oats = future. And if you’re not on board, you’re part of the problem.
Flush the milk, save the planet
From there, things get wild.
Oatly launches viral campaigns. Billboards. Mockumentaries. A stunt encouraging people to flush dairy milk down the toilet — a not-so-subtle nod to an old anti-alcohol PSA in Sweden.
People love it. Or hate it. Either way, they’re talking.
By 2020, Oatly is on fire. Revenue doubles year over year. It becomes the oat milk. Not a drink — a movement. You’re not just buying Oatly, you’re buying into a vibe.
Then Oprah and Jay-Z invest. Of course they do.
But so does Blackstone — one of the world’s most infamous private equity firms, accused of everything from rainforest destruction to general soullessness. Oatly fans are furious.
Oatly’s response? If we make sustainability profitable, the big dogs will follow.
Bold. Or naive. Maybe both.
