Specialty Coffee Wiki

Ghost Town Oats

Properties3
descriptionThe barista-founded oat milk brand made for espresso bars rather than supermarkets — started in December 2020 by three well-known American coffee professionals, and winner of the 2024–25 Sprudge Design Award for alternative-milk packaging.
tagscompany, alternative-milk, oat-milk, usa, los-angeles, barista, packaging, design
aliasesGhost Town Oats LLC, Ghost Town World, ghosttown.world

10 min read

Ghost Town Oats

Ghost Town Oats is an American oat milk brand built specifically for coffee bars. It is not a coffee roaster, a farm or a producer: it makes the milk that goes into the cup, and it was created by working baristas who wanted a plant milk that behaves properly under a steam wand.12

That is also why it appears in a coffee encyclopedia at all. Oat milk is now the default non-dairy option on most specialty menus, and which brand a café pours is a real craft decision — it changes how the milk textures, how sweet the drink tastes, and whether Latte art holds its shape. Ghost Town Oats is the clearest example of a brand that was designed from that side of the counter rather than from a supermarket shelf.

The company describes itself as “the first premium oat milk created by baristas, for every block,” and its own about page frames it as a “founder-led and community-owned brand that’s still behind the bar in spirit.”2

The company

AttributeDetail
BrandGhost Town Oats (web presence: ghosttown.world)
ProductBarista-formulated oat milk for espresso and milk drinks12
FoundedDecember 2020, per the company’s own about page2
FoundersMichelle Johnson, Ezra Baker and Eric J. Grimm — all coffee-industry figures1
BaseLos Angeles, California, as reported in February 20221
ManufacturingA contract manufacturer in New York that sources oats from a range of American farms1
RecognitionSprudge Design Award — Outstanding Packaging: Milk / Alternative Milk / Creamer, 2024–253

The founders

The three people behind it were already known inside the trade before the milk existed, which is unusual for a food-and-beverage startup and is a large part of how it got attention:1

  • Michelle Johnson — writer and barista, known for the coffee-culture publication The Chocolate Barista.1
  • Ezra Baker — co-host of the coffee podcast No Free Refills.1
  • Eric J. Grimm — associated with Glitter Cat Barista Bootcamp, the training programme that coaches competitors from under-represented backgrounds through coffee competitions.1

The coffee news site Sprudge introduced the company in February 2022 as one “created by high-profile industry veterans.”1

Michelle Johnson is now presented on the company’s own site under the name Michelle R. Johnson-Strickland and described there as an “award-winning barista, coffee culture critic, and the first Black woman to compete at the United States Barista Championship.”2

To verify — the "first Black woman to compete at the USBC" claim

That description is the company’s own copy about its own founder,2 and no independent source was read for this note that confirms it. The United States Barista Championship does not publish a competitor demographic archive that was consulted here. Treat it as a self-description until a competition record confirms it.

To verify — is this the same Michelle Johnson as elsewhere in this wiki?

This wiki already records a Michelle Johnson who worked in marketing and communications at Barista Hustle from November 2017 to August 2018, and who was the employee at the centre of the 2020 racial-slur admission by Matt Perger. No source read for this note connects the two, and the name is not rare. Do not assume they are the same person on the strength of the name alone.

To verify — who owns and runs it now

Sources from 2022 describe a three-founder company.1 The company’s current about page instead centres a single founder and calls the business “founder-led and community-owned.”2 Whether that reflects a change in ownership, a change in how the story is told, or simply a page written from one person’s voice is not documented in anything read for this note.

Ownership and identity claims

Ghost Town Oats is widely described in trade and consumer press, and in its own materials, as Black-owned, queer-owned and barista-owned — often with the word “first” attached.456

To verify — the "first" claims

A LinkedIn business post calls it “the first Black-owned, queer-owned, barista-owned oat milk company”;4 a Thrillist article calls it “the country’s first Black-owned oat milk company”;6 a café’s Instagram announcement calls it “the world’s first Black- and queer-owned oat milk company.”5 These are not three independent verifications — they are a self-description and press repetitions of it, and none of the three pages could be read directly for this note (Thrillist and LinkedIn both refused automated access). Proving a global or national “first” would require a census of oat-milk brands that no source here attempts. The ownership descriptions are consistently reported; the “first” ranking is a marketing claim.

How it is made

Ghost Town Oats does not own a factory. Michelle Johnson explained the arrangement in 2022 by direct analogy to coffee: the company works with a manufacturing partner in New York that sources oats from a variety of American farms, “similarly to how roasters just starting out, like we are, work with an importer to source green coffee.”1

That comparison is worth sitting with, because it is exactly the relationship a small roaster has with an importer like Cafe Imports or Mercanta: the brand controls the recipe and the relationships, someone else owns the machinery and the raw-material supply chain. No oat varieties, farm names or agricultural certifications are disclosed in any source read for this note — so unlike a coffee, there is no traceable lot behind the carton.

The founders’ stated formulation goals were taste, steaming capability and versatility in café service.4 Steaming capability is the one a barista cares about most: plant milks differ enormously in how stably they foam, and a milk that splits or goes stiff under steam is unusable for Latte art no matter how it tastes cold.

Timeline

DateEvent
December 2020Company founded, per its own about page2
By February 2022Product has “quietly begun rolling out” to coffee bars around Los Angeles; a waitlist of over 100 coffee companies nationwide has formed1
February 2022A WeFunder equity-crowdfunding campaign seeks 1 million**, with a **100 minimum investment; valuation and equity terms still to be set1
Late March / early April 2022First full production run expected1
17 January 2025Wins Outstanding Packaging: Milk / Alternative Milk / Creamer at the second annual Sprudge Design Awards3

To verify — the growth figures

A Gulfood “Founder Friday” profile is reported to state that Ghost Town Oats launched in Chicago and Phoenix in 2022, that its first production run was 65,000 units and sold out in six weeks against a six-month expectation, that it sold 1 million units in its first 10 months, and that it reached **1 million in revenue within its first year**, with a goal of being in coffee shops across all **48 contiguous states** by year's end.[^7] A LinkedIn post repeats the 1 million-in-10-months and 1-million-units figures and adds “over 500 coffee shops.”4

Neither page could be read for this note — the Gulfood URL returned an HTTP 400 error and LinkedIn blocks automated access — so all of these remain unconfirmed second-hand reports. They are also company-reported and unaudited even at source. Two further problems: the Chicago-and-Phoenix launch sits awkwardly against the February 2022 Sprudge interview describing a Los Angeles rollout,1 and the 48-state figure is explicitly a target, not an achieved outcome.

The design award

Ghost Town Oats won Outstanding Packaging: Milk / Alternative Milk / Creamer at the second annual Sprudge Design Awards, announced on 17 January 2025.3 The award is a public reader vote — more than 50,000 votes were cast across the semi-final and final rounds — run by the coffee publication Sprudge, and it judges design rather than flavour.3

For a product like this, packaging is not decoration. A carton on a café back-bar is seen by staff dozens of times a shift and by customers over the counter, and in a category where every competitor is a white box with a leaf on it, the look is most of the brand. It is worth reading the award for what it is, though: a popularity vote among readers of one trade publication, not blind scored judging like Cup of Excellence or the World Barista Championship. The general caution in Coffee media applies.

What this note does not record

The research behind this note looked for the things this wiki normally records about a coffee entity — cupping scores, altitudes, processing method, auction lots, prices paid — and found none, in Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence, Alliance for Coffee Excellence or Specialty Coffee Association material or anywhere else.

That is the expected result, not a gap in the search. Ghost Town Oats is a plant-milk manufacturer, not a producer or a green-coffee buyer, so it cannot appear in a producer results table. Where sources here mention “processing,” they mean oat-milk manufacturing, not coffee processing in the washed or natural sense. If you want auction-style detail connected to this brand, it would attach to the coffees poured by the cafés that use it, never to the milk.

Also undocumented anywhere read here: current ownership structure, the outcome of the WeFunder raise, audited revenue, retail price, ingredient list, and which cafés stock it today.

Footnotes

  1. Ghost Town Oats: An Interview With Co-Founder Michelle Johnson — Sprudge, 25 February 2022 — read via WebFetch; source of the three founders and their affiliations, the Los Angeles base, the New York manufacturing partner and American oat sourcing, the WeFunder 1 million target and 100 minimum, the 100-plus café waitlist, and the late March / early April first production run ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16

  2. About — Ghost Town Oats (official site) — read via WebFetch; source of the December 2020 founding, the “founder-led and community-owned” framing, the brand pillars, and the description of Michelle R. Johnson-Strickland ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. Announcing The Second Annual Sprudge Design Award Winners — Sprudge, 17 January 2025 — read via WebFetch; source of the Outstanding Packaging: Milk / Alternative Milk / Creamer win, the 17 January 2025 date, and the 50,000-vote public ballot ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Sharon Rozenberg Skolnick — LinkedIn post about Ghost Town Oats — source of the “first Black-owned, queer-owned, barista-owned” phrasing, the formulation goals, and the revenue, units and 500-shop figures; LinkedIn blocked automated reading, so this was not read directly ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Café Instagram announcement of switching to Ghost Town Oats — source of the “world’s first Black- and queer-owned oat milk company” phrasing and of the brand’s use in a Detroit café; not read directly ↩ ↩2

  6. This Black-Owned Oat Milk Company Is Changing the Plant-Based Game — Thrillist — source of the “country’s first Black-owned oat milk company” phrasing, the Los Angeles base, the Black Market Flea pop-ups and the summer availability expectation; the site refused automated fetching and was not read directly ↩ ↩2

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