In a sea of milk alternatives, will watermelon seeds stay afloat?
BY MELINA DEVONEY
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Featured photo courtesy of Essy Foto
What to know:
- Over the past decade, alternative milk options have expanded rapidly, with variations like pecan milk, pistachio milk, pea milk, and more entering the industry
- Watermelon seed milk has joined the growing list of plant-based milks and is touted for its smooth taste, creamy texture, and sustainability
Since going vegan nearly 20 years ago, I’ve tasted the best and worst of alt milks (or plant-based “beverages,” to be legally-correct). Fortunately, gone are the days that dairy-free café customers were stuck with just soy and rice milks. Those trailblazing alt milks were pushed out by oat and almond heading into the 2020s, which continue to dominate the market.
In the 2020s, the alt milk market exploded with beverages made of seemingly every plant under the sun: from mainstream brands like Pacific Foods Barista Series (soy, oat, almond, coconut, hemp, and most recently, pistachio), to niche brands like Mooala (banana), Sproud (pea), Koatji (koji-fermented oat), Táche (pistachio), Lattini (sunflower seed), THIS PKN (pecan), and Kiki (oat plus hemp, pumpkin seed, and coconut), to name a few. These quirky alt milks became a standing joke of hipster cafés. Jokes aside, the unwavering widespread adoption of alt milks in cafés means that dairy is no longer the accepted default, and alt milk brands have fine-tuned barista editions.
Perhaps inevitable in this rapid evolution, many far-alt milks gain quick momentum that peters out after a few years. Various once-popular alt milk brands have been quietly pulled from most in-store and online retailers in the last several years, and were unresponsive to my online inquiries. Needless to say, producing an enduring and competitive alt milk is tough when specialized supply chains and customer bases must be built from scratch.
What does it take to stand out within the plethora of alt milks and remain on café menus? For a significant portion of us Millennials and Gen Zs, it takes healthy ingredients with low environmental impact. I might have found a new frontrunner: watermelon seeds. In addition to its impressive flavor profile and performance behind the espresso bar, watermelon seed milk takes environmental sustainability to the next level.
Introducing watermelon seed milk to the industry
MILKish founder Maia Silva launched what he says is the first watermelon seed milk in 2024. This seemingly far-out endeavor by a budding entrepreneur was actually perfectly fated for Maia, who grew up admiring his father’s agricultural career in Brazil.
Maia’s idea for watermelon seed milk took root during his undergrad at University of California, Davis, where he studied Plant Sciences with a focus on crop production. He toured and worked in numerous agricultural fields and operations around the Sacramento Valley, a major almond-producing region.
“It always bothered me how (80%) of the world’s almond supply comes from California, which is a state that’s struggling with droughts and water scarcity,” Maia says. “(Almonds are) such a thirsty crop to grow.”
Even though plant-based milks have far lower environmental impact than dairy, many nondairy milks require extreme volumes of water—especially almond and rice.
This planted the seed in Maia’s brain to find a sustainable alternative to nut-based products. After graduating UC Davis, he worked in the consumer packaged goods industry for three years: “That gave me a lot of the confidence to take these crazy ideas that I had about finding more sustainable, more nutritious ingredients like watermelon seeds and diving headfirst into entrepreneurship and starting my own brand,” Maia says.
“Milking” ingredients from established supply chains reduces agricultural waste and saves water
The majority of watermelons in grocery stores are bred to be seedless, Maia explains. “To grow seedless watermelons, you actually need the seeded variety planted alongside them for cross pollination,” he told Barista Magazine. “A lot of times there are seeded varieties out there that don’t make it to retail shelves. Seeded varieties that are grown specifically for the purpose of bearing fruit to the seedless end up getting thrown away as agro waste.”
Watermelon seeds offer a low-water, low-waste “milk” ingredient because they can be sourced from suppliers that already utilize seeded watermelons for products like juices and snacking seeds. Similar to oat and nut “milking,” watermelon kernels (the white part inside the black shell) are blended with water and strained. MILKish claims that this process has a water footprint 99% smaller than almond milk and 15% smaller than oat milk.
“Milking a watermelon seed is a really crazy concept for a lot of people,” Maia says. “We love the absurdity of it. I milked the watermelon seed and I’m proud of it!”
Taste, nutrition and performance fit for specialty coffee
Unlike most alt milks, watermelon seed milk can be naturally free of sugar, carbs, and gums. It’s low-calorie and contains minerals, antioxidants, healthy fats, and more protein than almonds. Watermelon seed milk also tastes nothing like the fruit; it’s creamy with a clean and barely-nutty taste.
“It doesn’t have any of the lingering aftertaste or overpowering flavors that a lot of nut-based and oat-based milks tend to have. It’s got a good neutral flavor that doesn’t overpower anything,” Maia says. “We were really happy with how it turned out without having to use those gums and specific fillers to help with steaming.”
Watermelon seed milk is superb in the miso black sesame latte at The Iconic Coffee Club in San Diego: one of 10 coffee shops and 69 retailers across the U.S. currently stocking MILKish.
Wildroots Coffee in Charlotte, North Carolina has carried watermelon seed milk for the past year.
“It’s completely changed the alt milk game for us,” says owner Jasmine Koch. “It’s the perfect option for anyone who’s dairy-free or just wants something different, but without the heaviness of oat milk and the aftertaste of almond milk. It’s creamy, steams wonderfully, pairs beautifully with espresso and matcha, and lets the flavors shine instead of masking them. Many of our customers say the taste reminds them of ice cream.”
Will watermelon seeds stay afloat in the sea of alt milks?
Now, watermelon seed milk must contend for a permanent spot in the saturated and ever-evolving alt milk industry.
“The difficulty is breaking into retail shelves and cafés in these early stages since it’s something so new and the category hasn’t seen anything like it before,” Maia says.
Maia spent a year and a half developing a perfect recipe that stayed affordable for any curious customer.
“It had to align with a good competitive price that we felt good asking consumers to take a leap of faith on,” Maia says. Already, many customers are glad to have taken the leap on this resource-smart seed “milk.”
“The café that we currently work with are super excited to have us on the menu mainly because of all the conversations that buzz that it generates,” Maia says.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melina Devoney (she/her) is a barista and freelance writer in Los Angeles zeroed in on coffee and agriculture. She aims to amplify the voices of farmers and a diversity of perspectives within the coffee industry, and she’s happiest when running on wooded trails and dancing at concerts.
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