d.OAT is a plant-based food company based in Dublin, creating oat mlk and dairy-free ice cream that’s developed by chefs and baristas - made for cafés, not the supermarket shelf.

d.OAT was founded in Dublin in 2020 by barista Ste O’Loughlin and chef Sandy Wyer. Driven by frustration with oat mlks that just didn’t work in coffee, they set to developing their own product to fill the gap in the market for a quality plant based milk.

We sat down with Ste and asked him about his business journey so far.

Tell us about your business. What is your background? What led you to setting up your own business?

My background is in hospitality. I spent years as a barista in some of the best cafés in Dublin, working closely with Sandy Wyer, the chef-owner of Forest Avenue.

“We were always frustrated by the quality of plant milks - nothing steamed right, and the taste was off. So we started developing our own oat mlk from scratch in Sandy’s kitchen. That was the beginning.”

Why and when did you decide to become self-employed?

It happened naturally. Once we had the first version of our oat mlk working well in coffees, cafés started asking for it. We saw a real gap in the market for a product that was functional and delicious - something made with quality ingredients and designed specifically for specialty coffee. It felt like we had something worth building a business around.

What do you believe makes your business different from others in your industry?

We’re not a big faceless corporation pretending to understand coffee - we’re people from the café world. We built this brand for our peers. Our oat mlk was developed over years of hands-on testing in real cafés, and it’s now used by some of the best in Ireland. We also kept things simple: clean label, no gums or fillers, and always focused on taste, texture, and performance. Everything is made for the makers - the baristas, the chefs, the bakers. That’s our edge.

Biggest Challenges and Opportunities to date?

Scaling production was a big challenge. Our first version was fresh and made weekly - beautiful but impossible to scale. We spent years refining the recipe and finally relaunched in Tetra Pak format in 2023 with a one-year shelf life, which changed everything. That opened the door to national wholesale, export, and retail - without compromising on quality.

LEO Supports

d.OAT has received a number of supports from the LEO Dublin city since launching. These include:

• Business Expansion Grant
• Green for Business Programme
• Management Development Training
• Mentoring

Have you changed your business model or target market? What led you to this pivot?

Yes - even since getting our funding from the Local Enterprise Office we’ve started to work with a new distributor who will represent us exclusively to market and help grow our food service reach. We were anticipating entering large retailers but we can now see the value in holding off on that and focusing on our core customer base and also targeting independent retailers who can see the value in our product.

One stand-out moment that made you feel like you were on the right path (or made you rethink strategy)? Did it work?

A few standout moments for me is a month after we had relaunched in a Tetra Pak I was able to buy company phones and laptops and then also being able to pay myself a wage 6 months after we had relaunched. We just did the Dublin Coffee Festival (mid-April 2025) where we were competing with much larger brands who had much larger budget and our stall had queues the whole weekend to try our oat mlk and geloato ice cream. You can’t always compete with budget but you can always compete with creativity and imagination.

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