Lactose intolerance, along with all other food allergies and intolerances, is a medical condition which is protected under the ADA. You don’t have to accomodate it, but if you do, you cannot charge extra for it.
Five Guys has peanut allergy signs on the doors. They are safe.
McDonald’s hamburgers are cheaper than their cheeseburgers. They are safe.
A Starbucks latte is offered with dairy or a non-dairy creamers, and they charged more for the latter, violating the ADA rights of every lactose intolerant customer that purchased a non-dairy latte.
But a latte is a dairy based product, the non dairy cheaper alternative would be coffee. As the non dairy cheaper alternative of a cheeseburger is to remove the cheese.
ADA doesn’t care about cheaper, watching the movie with no dialogue is cheaper than giving a closed captioning box to deaf people, but theaters still have to do it. The standard is undue burden. Starbucks is going to have a hard time claiming it’s going to bankrupt them if they can’t charge extra for oat milk.
Black coffee and a latte are not the same product just because they both are coffee-based drinks. A latte doesn’t use brewed coffee at all, it uses espresso shots, and thus is mostly milk, not coffee. If you ordered a latte and got a cup of black coffee, that doesn’t even come close to what you ordered, unlike your hamburger/cheeseburger analogy where only the cheese of the difference
Either way, Starbucks does provide a non-dairy alternative for their latte however already: oat milk, almond milk, and soy milk, but they charge for those alternatives and that is where the issue is.
If they did not provide alternatives at all, or if they did not charge extra, there would be no issue. They either would have to remove the alternative options, which would reduce choice for everyone, or provide an alternative at no additional cost, which only eats into their massive profit margins a tiny bit. At wholesale bulk amounts like they buy, the cost difference is negligible for the product, and the markup on that substitution is insane.
If an accomodation is offered you cannot charge extra for it. This is not a difficult concept.
If McDonald’s offered vegan cheese as a substitute for their cheeseburgers, and they upcharged someone with lactose intolerance, they’d be in the same trouble. That’s why they never brought the McPlant to US markets - because they didn’t want to introduce an accommodation they couldn’t monetize.
Lactose intolerance, along with all other food allergies and intolerances, is a medical condition which is protected under the ADA. You don’t have to accomodate it, but if you do, you cannot charge extra for it.
Five Guys has peanut allergy signs on the doors. They are safe.
McDonald’s hamburgers are cheaper than their cheeseburgers. They are safe.
A Starbucks latte is offered with dairy or a non-dairy creamers, and they charged more for the latter, violating the ADA rights of every lactose intolerant customer that purchased a non-dairy latte.
But a latte is a dairy based product, the non dairy cheaper alternative would be coffee. As the non dairy cheaper alternative of a cheeseburger is to remove the cheese.
ADA doesn’t care about cheaper, watching the movie with no dialogue is cheaper than giving a closed captioning box to deaf people, but theaters still have to do it. The standard is undue burden. Starbucks is going to have a hard time claiming it’s going to bankrupt them if they can’t charge extra for oat milk.
Black coffee and a latte are not the same product just because they both are coffee-based drinks. A latte doesn’t use brewed coffee at all, it uses espresso shots, and thus is mostly milk, not coffee. If you ordered a latte and got a cup of black coffee, that doesn’t even come close to what you ordered, unlike your hamburger/cheeseburger analogy where only the cheese of the difference
Either way, Starbucks does provide a non-dairy alternative for their latte however already: oat milk, almond milk, and soy milk, but they charge for those alternatives and that is where the issue is.
If they did not provide alternatives at all, or if they did not charge extra, there would be no issue. They either would have to remove the alternative options, which would reduce choice for everyone, or provide an alternative at no additional cost, which only eats into their massive profit margins a tiny bit. At wholesale bulk amounts like they buy, the cost difference is negligible for the product, and the markup on that substitution is insane.
Not if they offer non-dairy creamer it isn’t…
If an accomodation is offered you cannot charge extra for it. This is not a difficult concept.
If McDonald’s offered vegan cheese as a substitute for their cheeseburgers, and they upcharged someone with lactose intolerance, they’d be in the same trouble. That’s why they never brought the McPlant to US markets - because they didn’t want to introduce an accommodation they couldn’t monetize.