Vegans and lactose-intolerant KitKat enjoyers are in for a shock, as Nestle has just announced their plans to discontinue the immensely popular Vegan KitKat range. The tasty snack was made with rice milk and was available in 15 European countries, including the UK, France and Denmark. The introduction of the bar in 2021 was due to popular consumer demand for a vegan KitKat alternative. It was also slated to help Nestle’s Net Zero plans for 2050 as the KitKat Vegan has an 18% smaller carbon footprint than the original.

However, the company has announced that, due to insufficient sales, the dairy-free bar will be retracted from global stores over the coming months. Though there is no exact date provided for when sales will stop in the UK. A Nestlé spokesperson said: “We know that KitKat Vegan has been popular for those looking for dairy or vegan alternatives. Unfortunately, global demand has been reducing to the point that production was making manufacturing more and more complex and we have now made the difficult decision to discontinue the product. We know there will be some disappointment, however it will still be available in the UK and Ireland until the summer.”.

The discontinuation of the bar has been met with devastated reactions online. A contributor to the Facebook group Vegan Food UK wrote: “No! You are just cruel! It’s one of the only nice tasting vegan chocolate products that my daughter can eat without an allergic reaction. We’ve been paying your over inflated prices for a long while and now you’re taking that little bit of pleasure away from her and so many thousands of others.”.

Although, while enjoyed by many, KitKat Vegan was not a universal hit. One issue was marketed at a higher price point than the original, the regular four-finger bar being sold for 75 p at Tesco, versus £1 for the vegan alternative. One commenter wrote, “Nooo! I love these, so do my kids! Maybe if they’d sold them in multi pack and brought the price down, and put them next to the regular Kit Kats instead of only in the ‘free from’ aisle.”.

Another point of contention was that the snack also used a darker kind of chocolate, which meant it didn’t quite taste the same as the original either. Consumers also took issue with Nestle's track record, given that the company has raised intense controversy over the past few decades. The most infamous of these was its aggressive marketing of baby formula in developing countries in the 1970s, despite the health risks associated with forgoing breast milk for infants.