Oatly began not as a rebel brand but as food science. In 1994 at Lund University in Sweden, a food scientist and his brother, working under a company formed with a cereals group, developed an enzymatic process that snips oat starches into simple sugars and releases beta-glucans, the soluble fiber that gives the drink its creamy body. The first product did not reach shelves until 2001, made in Landskrona under a Malmö headquarters. The breakthrough for coffee shops was the Barista Edition, which adds rapeseed oil to raise fat from 1.5 to 3 percent so the drink can hold microfoam for latte art. Then the company adopted the slogan milk, but made for humans, and the Swedish dairy lobby LRF Mjölk sued.

Oatly published the full 172-page lawsuit online, and when Danish dairy giant Arla Foods mocked oat drinks with a fake brand called Pjolk, Oatly trademarked Pjolk and printed it on its own cartons. The CEO’s off-key Wow No Cow jingle, filmed in 2014 and banned in Sweden, aired during the 2021 Super Bowl. Growth then brought compromise: a $200 million stake sold in 2020 to investors led by Blackstone, a 2021 Nasdaq listing at about $10 billion backed by Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, and Howard Schultz, and a July 2021 Spruce Point Capital short report alleging overstated revenue and greenwashing.

• Oatly spent 700,000 pounds on London billboards at King’s Cross and Oxford Circus using the slogan banned in Sweden.
• Fans objected in 2018 when Oatly sold leftover oat residue to a Swedish pig farm.
• Oatly lost a trademark case in London against the small family farm Glebe Farm Foods over its PureOaty drink.
• In 2022 the UK Advertising Standards Authority banned several Oatly ads for misleading climate comparisons.
• Its Are You Stupid? campaign helped push the EU to withdraw dairy-backed Amendment 171 in May 2021.