Coffee Mate Vs International Delight Coffee Creamers: Which Is Best?

Coffee Mate and International Delight have been making it possible to bring specialty flavors to your home brewed coffee for decades. Coffee Mate hit markets first, showing up on shelves with a powdered creamer in 1961; International Delight appeared in the 1980s with the first liquid flavored coffee creamer on the circuit. Thanks to the Starbucks effect and an uptick in deluxe coffee creativity, these two dependable producers have secured a permanent spot in the dairy section, throwing a tasty twist at everyday coffee consumers who prefer to be their own baristas.

Both brands may provide popular coffee creamers that make deciding on one a real taste bud-twister, but there's bound to be a more favorable option overall. How do you go about deciding which is better, Coffee Mate or International Delight? In what I like to call the Check It All Out method, I checked it all out and dug up the frothy facts about each company's line of products, including flavors and formats, prices, and how a few of the basic options fare when tasted side-by-side. After enjoying both brands for years without even considering the merits of each one, I've finally determined which is the better creamer. Let the sweet suspense begin!

There's no shortage of variety when it comes to both Coffee Mate and International Delight creamers. The corporate competition keeps each brand returning to the test kitchen for new flavors throughout the year. But both companies stock a standard selection of options that are around no matter what page your calendar is turned to. For Coffee Mate, the foundational portfolio features simple coffee house possibilities such as French Vanilla, Hazelnut, Amaretto, and plain-old Cream flavored. Dig a little deeper in the trove and you'll find an extended array that adds a more gourmet touch to your coffee cup, possibilities like Irish Cream, Peppermint Mocha, and Cinnamon Vanilla. In total, the Coffee Mate website displays a mind-bending 48 flavors. That's a lot of creamer to sample.

Take a peek at the next shelf over and you'll find that International Delight has a veritable copycat catalog of tastes and temptations, overlapping in spots with French Vanilla and Hazelnut while rocking radical departures like White Chocolate Raspberry and Southern Butter Pecan. Sadly, the 19 flavors in the general collection shown online isn't even half of what Coffee Mate has come up with. Creativity is fantastic, but quantity plus creativity is a far more winning formula. Points for flavor variety clearly go to Coffee Mate.

You don't always want a gallon of creamer sitting in your refrigerator. Sometimes you're just looking for a splash of something smooth to lighten up the taste and texture of your favorite brew. When it comes time to grab a less industrial-sized bottle of creamer, the only brand that gives you a smaller option is Coffee Mate. This considerate company provides not only the larger 64-ounce and 32-ounce sized bottles, but a selection of smaller 16-ounce bottles that make sense for the more conservative coffee drinker who can make a lesser quantity last. The more petite packaging also makes for better storage in dorm or bedroom size refrigerators that are too restrictive to fit the bulkier bottle. Whether or not you find the flavors you're looking for in the reduced size, the quantity is a dice roll, but you can always find at least something to get the job done.

International Delight also indulges 16-ounce, 32-ounce, and 64-ounce bottles of its creamers in a restricted selection of flavors. By and large, the greater selection of creamers from the company come in the 16-ounce bottle, which gives shoppers slightly less choice when deciding on a flavor and size that works best for them. Because both brands have larger and smaller bottles, Coffee Mate and International Delight share the victory here.

Special occasions call for special flavors, and both Coffee Mate and International Delight know all too well how coffee fiends love a bougie upgrade to the creamy creations. Throughout the year, you'll find Coffee Mate stirring things up with special promo flavors based on movie releases like "Mean Girls" Pink Frosting flavored creamer as well as brand crossovers like Twix. International Delight also jumps on the limited edition bandwagon, pushing flavors that represent TV shows like Netflix's smash series "Love is Blind" with a wedding cake flavored creamer. Collabs for the brand include candy bar mash-ups like Reese's, Almond Joy, and Willy Wonka Fudge Caramel that let coffee lovers jazz up their java with familiar sweetness.

When the holidays roll around, both brands get in the spirit with a similar selection of festive flavors. Whether you favor Coffee Mate or International Delight, you can count on seeing repackaged peppermint mocha creamer as well as timely tastes like Gingerbread, Sugar Cookie, and Hot Chocolate. Regardless of which brand you prefer, you can count on finding fun surprises in the creamer case to make your morning cup or your afternoon refill a more exciting prospect. As far as coming up with special edition flavors, both Coffee Mate and International Delight perform admirably.

If you need a coffee creamer that doesn't require refrigeration to keep in your desk or your messenger bag, both brands have you covered. If you're OK doing a little extra stirring to get your concoction just right, you can pick up a plastic bottle of powdered Coffee Mate in Chocolate Creme, Hazelnut, and French Vanilla flavors. It's just like the stuff you find at do-it-yourself coffee bars, but with the dependability of a brand you already know and trust instead of a generic canister. You can also find sugar-free and fat-free versions to maintain your healthier coffee consumption.

If you'd rather keep your coffee creamer assets liquid, you can ask for International Delight or Coffee Mate singles that mimic restaurant-style half-and-half capsules. Both options are faithful re-creations of the flavors in the refrigerator section, and both can last without being kept in cold storage, so you don't have to rush to use them. In fact, depending on your flavor preference, you can mix and match powder and liquid to have a storehouse of greatest hits ready to make your bean juice more bearable. International Delight re-creates five of its most familiar flavors, while Coffee Mate's list is a high-quality quartet. For offering both powder and liquid refrigeration-free creamers, Coffee Mate takes one step forward.

Even if you're indulging in the sweet creaminess of a coffee stir-in, you don't necessarily have to surrender to the sugar or fat count that usually come along with the typical flavored coffee creamer. With Coffee Mate, you have a decent number of fat-free and sugar-free possibilities in bottles that replicate familiar flavors without these more-questionable elements. You can always count on the standards of French Vanilla and Hazelnut to be in both forms, and you'll even see seasonal sensations like Sweet Chocolate Peppermint and fun candy bar creations like Twix in sugar-free form. It's a helpful choice that's almost stocked right next to the regular versions for easy access. For keeping your fat grams in check, French Vanilla and Original are available as well.

International Delight exerts notably less effort to offer only bottles of French Vanilla, Hazelnut, and Caramel Macchiato creamer in its Zero Sugar line, though holiday pop-ups like Peppermint Mocha may make occasional appearances. In the fat-free arena, there's only French Vanilla to make your Americano a bit more continental. For anyone keeping score at home, that's another one in the win column for Coffee Mate.

Coffee Mate watched the changing habits of its customer base and introduced a line of creamers called natural bliss (all-lowercase letters for sweet style). The plant-based versions are available in smaller bottles that make use of a more nutrition-minded set of ingredients for a range of comparatively healthy coffee creamer creations . Anyone who prefers real milk as part of their creamer composition can find flavors featuring full-fledged dairy; similarly, those who seek out alternative milks can indulge in oat milk and almond milk creamers that eliminate the casein, a milk derivative found in the regular Coffee Mate collection. This gives dedicated plant-based eaters an opportunity to splash around in the coffee creamer world without compromising their dietary standards.

How does International Delight step up to the plate — or the mug, rather — when it comes to accommodating the plant-based coffee creamer lovers of the world? It doesn't; there are no alternate versions of the company's creamers that utilize casein-free formulations, which leaves a swath of shoppers wide open for Coffee Mate to capture delicious dollars. Naturally, Coffee Mate gets the points for plant-based propositions in the creamer game.

One of the newer additions to the coffee creamer coterie is the cold foam creamer, a riff on specialty aerosol whip cream that delivers a fluffy cloud like topper for your mug. It's a clear attempt at replicating an authentic coffeehouse experience without requiring the coffee house, letting you play coffee artist as you spritz your way to a more premium coffee experience. Coffee Mate caters to the cold foam crowd with a couple of spray versions of its more familiar flavors, French Vanilla and Italian Sweet Cream, plus a mouthwatering take on Nestlé Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, which replicates the company's liquid creamer recipe.

International Delight has also picked up on the cold foam vibe and sent a few canisters of its own out into the cool world of coffee creamer creations. The website displays French Vanilla, Caramel Macchiato, and Sweet & Creamy as the flavor options, but my Kroger location also had Salted Caramel Mocha, an indication that International Delight may be taking this sector into tasty terrain quicker than Coffee Mate. International Delight takes the win for its cold foam creamer creativity.

Of course, pricing for both Coffee Mate and International Delight in whatever form you prefer will vary based on the retailer and the area. Perusing the online listings, I found that Coffee Mate creamers are consistently priced at between $4 and $5 per 32-ounce bottle at most national grocery chains. Cold foam can be found between $4.50 and $6, while powdered creamers and singles are shelved at around $6. In the realm of International Delight, both the company's 32-ounce bottles and boxes of singles are priced between $4 and $5, while cold foam is priced between $5 and $6. Generally, special releases and seasonal flavors fall in line with this pricing structure too.

One of the more dependable aspects of coffee creamer shopping for either brand is the frequency with which these products go on sale. You can usually find one or the other on special during any given week, sometimes with specialty coupons that let you take extra advantage of the lower dollar amount. Since coffee creamer is something of a luxury item, it makes sense to check before you shop, though you may not find your preferred brand or flavor on sale in the week you're looking for it. This is where it pays to be flexible with your coffee creamer preference, a practice that can save you a pretty penny while keeping the creamer flowing. For the pricing round, both Coffee Mate and International Delight score equally.

Even having indulged regularly in both creamer brands, I had no idea which one was better; I just assumed they were essentially the same. But after rounding up French Vanilla and Caramel flavors from both, plus a bottle of each brand's cold foam offerings, I discovered how distinctly different these creamers really are. When I sipped International Delight Caramel Macchiato, I found out it has more of a traditional creaminess to it, which translates to a very natural-tasting creamer. Coffee Mate Caramel tends more toward a buttery taste, which comes across as slightly less natural and more chemical-tasting. Similarly, International Delight French Vanilla comes across with a more authentic vanilla experience, akin to melted ice cream being poured into your coffee cup. Meanwhile Coffee Mate had a powdery, floral layer that was a little troubling.

The cold foam spritz was a new experience for me. I was expecting a whipped cream-like consistency, though it turned out to be less sturdy and more like foamed milk, but cold (the name makes more sense on this side of the taste test). Coffee Mate's Nestlé Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie was supremely sweet and buttery; International Delight's Salted Caramel Mocha was candy-like in the best possible way. For having a more consistently enjoyable tasting experience, International Delight gets on the map.

Even with International Delight taking the ribbon for taste, the thoughtfulness of Coffee Mate makes this brand the clear winner. Having a deeper bench of flavors that come and go throughout the year but keep a steady presence in the refrigerator case gives these bottles more possibility for presence in the shopper's eye. Creating both powder (which was the company's original offering) and liquid singles lets coffee fans enjoy creamer no matter where they might be grabbing coffee. And providing alternatives to creamers with dairy derivatives helps Coffee Mate corner the market in the creamer sphere.

This isn't to say International Delight doesn't serve a sensational product; the brand wouldn't have won points for taste if that were the case. But as a holistic experience covering flavors, plant-based versions, and retailer visibility, the company is just a bit behind the curve. Maybe the big brains will take note and expand the brand's offerings to keep up with Coffee Mate. For the moment, International Delight creamers deserve silver, while Coffee Mate creamers grab the gold.

Because I like making things challenging for myself, I took an overhead view of what would make Coffee Mate or International Delight the better brand. I researched the flavors both online and in my local Kroger location to see what was on hand. I also cruised the end caps and promotional cases to see if there were options not represented in the general population. A trip to the coffee aisle gave me the information I needed regarding powdered and single-serving offerings from both brands. I already knew that my store carries a load of different products from the two companies, which made it easy to do my creamer reconnaissance.

For the taste test, I thought it would be most fair to keep the flavors comparable and pretty standard. Comparing International Delight's Almond Cherry Macaron to Coffee Mate's Coconut Crème wouldn't really tell me much about the two bottles; both sound great and probably work well, but this apples-to-apples match-up required both bottles to be ... French Vanilla and Caramel, actually (if either company is reading, an apple-flavored creamer would be a real treat). Since the cold foam is hit-or-miss stock, I did my best to line up the two brands from what was on hand. I won't lie: I ended up a little shaky from all the caffeine. But wow ... what a rush!