Looking for 85C Bakery Cafe vegetarian options? Start at the drinks counter, because every tea, coffee, and smoothie on the US menu is meat-free. The bread and cake cases need more care. Shredded pork sits on top of two items sold as cakes, and three sweet sponge rolls list beef tallow. That’s the kind of thing what about the vegetarians exists to catch, and 85C makes it findable because it publishes a full ingredient list for every single item.
A Quick Look at 85C Bakery Cafe
85C Bakery Cafe is a Taiwanese bakery and drinks chain that opened its first store in July 2004 in what is now New Taipei, Taiwan. The founder is Wu Cheng-hsueh. The brand is styled 85°C, and the name points at 85 degrees Celsius, which the company calls the right temperature for coffee. You will see it written both ways in the US, so 85C and 85°C are the same chain.
The parent company is Gourmet Master Co., Ltd., registered in the Cayman Islands and listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2723 since November 2010. The chain crossed to the US in 2008 with a first store in Irvine, California. A central kitchen in Brea, California has supplied the West Coast stores since 2013.
Technomic counted 88 US locations and $284 million in US system-wide sales for 2025, published in the 2026 Top 500 Chains list at Restaurant Business. The official store locator lists stores in 14 states, weighted toward California, Texas, and Washington. Gourmet Master spent 2025 closing more than 40 unprofitable stores in China, per Taipei Times, while naming the US one of its two key profit centers. New US stores opened or broke ground through 2026, so the China retrenchment and the US buildout are separate stories.
85C Bakery Cafe Vegetarian Options: What to Order
Most of the bakery case is fine for lacto-ovo vegetarians. The traps cluster in two places: the savory bread shelf, and a short list of desserts that hide animal ingredients in the fine print. Every row below comes from 85C’s own published ingredient lists, checked item by item.
| Menu Item | Vegetarian | Vegan |
|---|---|---|
| Salted Butter Bread | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (butter, cream) |
| Garlic Cheese | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (egg, cheese) |
| Jalapeno Cream Cheese | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (cream cheese) |
| Pork Sung Bun | ❌ No (shredded pork) | ❌ No |
| Cheese Dog, Bacon & Cheese, Ham & Cheese, Spicy Sausage | ❌ No (pork) | ❌ No |
| Hawaiian Chicken, Pesto Chicken Sandwich | ❌ No (chicken) | ❌ No |
| Tuna Sandwich | ❌ No (tuna, chicken bouillon) | ❌ No |
| Hokkaido Custard Bun, Ube Bread, Red Bean Bread | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (egg, dairy) |
| White, Milk, and Multigrain Toast | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (milk powder) |
| Spinach Kale Danish | ⚠️ Check (cheese enzymes not specified) | ❌ No |
| 85°C Egg Tart, Mochi Egg Tart | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (egg, cream) |
| Pork Sung Mini Cake, Pork Sung Half Moon | ❌ No (pork floss on a sponge cake) | ❌ No |
| Matcha Red Bean Roll, Chocolate Sponge Roll, Coconut Custard Sponge Roll | ❌ No (beef tallow and gelatin) | ❌ No |
| Tiramisu, panna cotta cups, mousse cups, creme brulee cakes | ❌ No (gelatin) | ❌ No |
| Mango Cheesecake, Red Velvet, Black Forest, Basque Cheesecake | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy, egg) |
| Cranberry Crisp | ⚠️ Check (marshmallow source not listed) | ❌ No |
| Sea Salt Coffee and the rest of the Sea Salt Series | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (half and half) |
| Black Tea, Jasmine Green Tea, and the fruit teas | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Boba, Mango Jelly, Lychee Jelly, Coffee Jelly | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Mini Crystal Boba | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (milk powder, whey) |
Savory Breads: Only Three of Twelve Are Meat-Free
The savory shelf is the thinnest part of the menu for vegetarians. Twelve items sit in that category and nine of them contain meat or fish. The three you can eat are Salted Butter Bread, Garlic Cheese, and Jalapeno Cream Cheese.
Salted Butter Bread is the safest pick and the plainest. Its ingredient list runs flour, water, salted butter, cake flour, cream, sugar, margarine, salt, yeast, and dough conditioners. Garlic Cheese is soft bread under garlic spread and mozzarella. Jalapeno Cream Cheese is a crusty cheese bread with jalapenos and cream cheese inside.
Skip the rest. Pork Sung Bun is topped with dried shredded pork. Cheese Dog, Bacon & Cheese, Ham & Cheese, and Spicy Sausage are all pork. Hawaiian Chicken and the Pesto Chicken Sandwich are chicken.
One detail worth knowing: all three of 85C’s sandwiches list chicken bouillon in the seasoning. That includes the Tuna Sandwich, so it isn’t even safe for people who eat fish but not poultry. There is currently no vegetarian sandwich at 85C at all.
Sweet Breads and Danishes Are the Strong Section
All 25 sweet breads are vegetarian, and so are all 13 danishes and strudels. This is where the vegetarian options at 85C Bakery Cafe get genuinely good.
- Ube Bread. Purple sweet potato filling in a soft roll. One of the chain’s signatures.
- Hokkaido Custard Bun. Milk bread filled with pastry cream.
- Red Bean Bread. Red bean paste topped with black sesame seeds.
- Taro Mochi Boroh and Marble Taro. Two takes on taro, one with a chewy mochi center.
- Coconut Milk Bun, Brioche, Sweet Butter Wreath. Plain, buttery, good with coffee.
- Chocolate Croissant, Coffee Cruffin, Croissant Crunch. The laminated pastries are all meat-free.
- Mango Danish, Strawberry Danish, Maple Danish, Jumbo Coconut Strudel. Fruit-forward and safe.
The Spinach Kale Danish is the one item here that deserves a caveat. It’s meat-free, but it uses feta and Monterey cheese, and 85C lists cheese cultures as “enzymes” without naming the source. Strict vegetarians who avoid animal rennet should treat it as unconfirmed.
The five toast loaves are also fine. White Toast, Milk Toast, Multigrain Toast, and both thick chocolate toasts all list milk powder and no meat.
Cakes and Pastries: Where the Real Traps Are
Two pork items are shelved with the desserts, not the savory bread. Pork Sung Mini Cake is described as an airy chiffon cake with sweet custard, coated in pork floss, dried seaweed, and sesame. Pork Sung Half Moon is a vanilla sponge cake with fresh cream and pork floss. Nothing about the word “cake” warns you, and pork floss looks a lot like a sweet fluffy topping under glass.
Beef tallow is the second trap, and it’s the one almost nobody catches. Three sweet sponge rolls list it: Matcha Red Bean Roll, Chocolate Sponge Roll, and Coconut Custard Sponge Roll. All three also list gelatin. Their names and menu descriptions give you no hint at all. If you’ve read elsewhere that the Matcha Red Bean Roll is vegan, that claim is contradicted by 85C’s own published ingredients.
Gelatin is the third and widest trap. It appears in more than 20 cakes and dessert cups, including Classic Tiramisu, Tiramisu Cheesecake, Deluxe Chocolate Mousse, Coffee Creme Brulee, Mango Creme Brulee, Deluxe Strawberry Cream, Ube Cream Cake, Blueberry Cheesecake, Daifuku, Mango Mousse Cake, Caramel Pudding, Strawberry Cream Square, and every panna cotta or mousse cup in the individual dessert case. Blueberry Cheesecake specifies kosher gelatin, which is still animal-derived and still not vegetarian.
Plenty of good cake is left. Mango Cheesecake, Red Velvet, Black Forest, Macchiato Cream Cake, Berry De Leche, Mango Cream Roll, Cream Cheesecake, Souffle Cheesecake, and Strawberry Tiramisu list no gelatin. In the pastry case, the 85°C Egg Tart, Mochi Egg Tart, Basque Cheesecake, Hokkaido Cheese Tart, Pineapple Cake, 85°C Cream Puff, Coconut Snow Cubes, Blueberry Muffin, Berry Tart, Lemon Mini Cakes, and the cookies are all clear. Nougat Candy is set with egg white rather than gelatin, so it’s fine too.
Cranberry Crisp is the only item we’d mark unresolved. It lists marshmallow with no sub-ingredients, and commercial marshmallow is usually gelatin-set. Ask before you buy it.
Every Drink on the Menu Is Vegetarian
All 50 drinks are vegetarian. That covers the espresso line, the fresh teas, the milk teas, the blended drinks, and the Sea Salt Series the chain is known for.
Sea Salt Coffee is sweetened Americano under a salted cream cap. The cream is half and half, so the drink is vegetarian and firmly not vegan or dairy-free. Same for Sea Salt Caramel Coffee, Sea Salt Black Tea, and Sea Salt Jasmine Green Tea.
Milk Tea and the house 85°C Coffee use a powdered creamer rather than fresh milk, which reads as dairy-free at a glance. Read the label. Both list sodium caseinate, a milk protein, and both carry a milk allergen flag.
The toppings are better news than most boba shops. Regular Boba is tapioca starch, water, and thickeners. Mango Jelly and Lychee Jelly are coconut, sugar, water, and a preservative. Coffee Jelly is set with carrageenan and konnyaku powder. None of them uses gelatin. The one exception is Mini Crystal Boba, which is made with a pudding powder containing milk powder and whey.
What’s Vegan at 85C Bakery Cafe?
Vegans can drink but they can’t really eat. Nothing in the bread, cake, or pastry case is vegan. Eggs, butter, cream, or milk powder run through all of it, including the plainest toast.
The drinks are a different answer. These list no animal ingredients at all:
- Americano, which is just water and coffee beans
- Black Tea and Jasmine Green Tea, sweetened with cane sugar
- Lemon Black Tea, Mango Green Tea, Mango Lemon Green Tea, Peach Green Tea, Passion Fruit Green Tea, and Red Grapefruit Green Tea
- Mango Slush
- Boba, Mango Jelly, Lychee Jelly, and Coffee Jelly as add-ons
Skip the Aloe topping, which is sweetened with honey. Skip Mini Crystal Boba for the milk powder. Lattes can be built with soy milk at some stores for a small upcharge, but the espresso drinks that come premixed with the house creamer can’t be made dairy-free.
Special Dietary Requirements and Allergies
85C publishes more than most bakery chains. Every item on the US site carries a full ingredient list, an allergen line, and nutrition data, and there’s a downloadable ingredients PDF as well. Use the per-item lists rather than the PDF, which is older.
The allergen line alone is not enough, and here’s why. 85C flags “CONTAINS MEAT” on Pork Sung Bun, Pork Sung Half Moon, Bacon & Cheese, and Cheese Dog. Spicy Sausage, whose first ingredient is pork sausage in beef collagen casings, carries no meat flag at all. Gelatin and beef tallow never trigger a flag either. They only show up in the fine print.
Other things to know before you order:
- No lard. The fats across the menu are butter, margarine, soybean oil, and palm oil. A few items list unqualified “shortening” with no source named, so that one stays unconfirmed.
- Cheese rennet is not disclosed. Cheeses list “enzymes” without a source, which affects Garlic Cheese, Jalapeno Cream Cheese, Cheese Bites, the Spinach Kale Danish, and the cheesecakes.
- The Whipped Cream add-on has no published ingredient list. Nutrition data only.
- Nothing is gluten-free. Wheat runs through the whole bakery menu.
- Shared cases and shared tongs. You serve yourself with a tray and tongs, and the pork items sit in the same cases as everything else. Cross-contact is realistic.
- 85C makes no halal claim, and it sells pork in both the bread and cake cases.
- Box sets substitute items. The party trays and box sets say unavailable items get swapped, so contents aren’t guaranteed.
Tips for Vegetarians at 85C Bakery Cafe
- Order the drink first. All 50 are vegetarian, so it’s the one part of the counter you don’t have to think about.
- Treat the savory shelf as off-limits except for Salted Butter Bread, Garlic Cheese, and Jalapeno Cream Cheese.
- Learn what pork floss looks like. It’s a pale, fluffy, slightly stringy topping, and it turns up on two sponge cakes.
- Avoid anything mousse, panna cotta, tiramisu, or creme brulee. That’s where the gelatin lives.
- Skip the three sponge rolls. Matcha Red Bean, Chocolate, and Coconut Custard all list beef tallow.
- Pull up the ingredient list on your phone at the case. 85C puts it on the menu page for every item.
- Ask about Cranberry Crisp and the Whipped Cream topping if you want them, because neither is fully documented.
Conclusion
85C Bakery Cafe vegetarian options come down to a simple rule. Sweet bread, danishes, toast, and drinks are safe. Savory bread is mostly not, and a handful of desserts hide pork floss, beef tallow, or gelatin behind names that sound harmless. The chain publishes every ingredient list, so you can check any item in ten seconds at the counter.
For the wider picture on ordering out, read our guide to eating vegetarian and vegan at restaurants, or browse every chain we’ve covered in the restaurant guides. If you like this style of bakery, we’ve also broken down Paris Baguette, Tous Les Jours, and Corner Bakery.
