What Is Simple Mills?
Simple Mills is a grain-free, gluten-free snack and baking brand built around almond flour and other nut- and seed-based flours instead of wheat. The company's lineup spans almond flour crackers, seed flour crackers, crunchy and soft-baked cookies, baking mixes for pancakes, pizza dough, and cakes, and a line of protein bars and sweet thins. It's marketed heavily on ingredient minimalism — short, recognizable ingredient lists free of artificial preservatives, seed oils, and refined sugar — which is exactly the kind of positioning that leads a lot of shoppers to assume the whole brand is automatically vegan.
That assumption isn't quite right. Simple Mills isn't a vegan-first company the way Follow Your Heart or Miyoko's is — it's a "clean ingredient" company that happens to be mostly, but not entirely, plant-based. Most of the lineup is vegan, but a specific handful of products break from that pattern, and it's easy to grab one of them off a shelf assuming otherwise.
Why It's Ambiguous for Vegans
The confusion comes from three places. First, almond flour and other nut-based baking is culturally associated with paleo and grain-free eating, which overlaps heavily with vegan shopping habits but isn't the same thing — paleo explicitly allows eggs, honey, and dairy, all of which show up in a few Simple Mills products. Second, most of the cracker and cookie lineup genuinely is vegan and even carries an on-package "Vegan" callout, which trains shoppers to expect that label across the whole brand rather than checking each box individually. Third, the baking mixes are vegan as packaged — the dry mix itself contains no animal ingredients — but the directions on the box typically call for eggs, butter, or milk to prepare them, which creates a different kind of ambiguity: is a product "vegan" if the finished, cooked version depends on ingredients you have to swap in yourself?
The Ingredients to Watch For
Three animal-derived ingredients show up across the small number of non-vegan Simple Mills products: dairy (in the form of cheese powder or milk-derived flavoring), eggs, and honey. None of these are hidden behind unfamiliar names — they're listed plainly on the ingredient panel — but they're easy to miss if you're grabbing a familiar-looking box without reading it every time, especially across a brand with dozens of near-identical SKUs.
Product-by-Product Breakdown
According to Simple Mills' own customer support documentation, the following products are not vegan:
- Farmhouse Cheddar Almond Flour Crackers — contains dairy (cheese)
- Pop Mmms (the brand's popped snack line) — contains dairy
- Soft-Baked Bars — contain both eggs and honey
- Honey Cinnamon Sweet Thins — contains honey
- Lemon Sweet Thins — contains honey
Everything else in the current lineup — including the core Almond Flour Crackers (Fine Ground Sea Salt, Rosemary & Sea Salt, Cracked Black Pepper, Sun-Dried Tomato & Basil varieties), the Sprouted Seed and Everything Organic Seed Flour Crackers, the Crunchy Cookies line (Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate), and the baking mixes as packaged — is formulated without animal-derived ingredients. Most of these carry a "Vegan" callout directly on the box, which is the fastest way to confirm status while standing in the aisle.
The baking mixes deserve a separate note. The Original Almond Flour Pancake & Waffle Mix, for example, lists only almond flour, arrowroot, organic coconut sugar, organic coconut flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and sea salt — no egg or dairy in the dry mix itself. But the recipe on the box typically calls for eggs and butter or oil to actually cook pancakes, so the finished product isn't vegan unless you substitute a flax egg and plant-based butter or oil, both of which work fine in Simple Mills' own recipes. The same logic applies to the brand's cake and pizza dough mixes.
| Product Line | Vegan? | Watch For |
|---|---|---|
| Almond Flour Crackers (most flavors) | Yes | — |
| Farmhouse Cheddar Crackers | No | Dairy (cheese) |
| Seed Flour Crackers | Yes | — |
| Pop Mmms | No | Dairy |
| Crunchy Cookies | Yes | — |
| Soft-Baked Bars | No | Eggs, honey |
| Honey Cinnamon / Lemon Sweet Thins | No | Honey |
| Baking Mixes (dry, as packaged) | Yes | Directions often call for egg/butter |
How to Check a Box Yourself
The most reliable method is also the simplest: look for the green "Vegan" callout box printed below the ingredient panel on qualifying products, which Simple Mills applies consistently across its vegan SKUs. If that callout isn't there, scan the ingredient list for "egg," "honey," or any dairy-derived term (milk, cheese, whey, casein). For baking mixes specifically, check both the ingredient list on the box (for the dry mix) and the printed recipe directions (for what you'd need to add), since those can tell two different stories about the same product. When in doubt on any packaged food — Simple Mills or otherwise — running the label through the spvegan.com ingredient checker is a faster way to catch a flagged ingredient than scanning it manually every time.
Nutrition Snapshot: Vegan vs. Non-Vegan Crackers
| Product | Serving | Calories | Fat | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fine Ground Sea Salt Crackers (vegan) | ~13 crackers | 150 | 11g | 4g |
| Farmhouse Cheddar Crackers (not vegan) | ~13 crackers | 150 | 11g | 4g |
Nutritionally, the vegan and non-vegan versions of the crackers land in roughly the same range, since both use the same almond-flour base — the dairy in the cheddar version is there for flavor, not for a meaningfully different macro profile. That's a useful reminder that "not vegan" here isn't about the product being less clean or less "Simple Mills" in spirit; it's purely an ingredient-list issue.
Who Should Be Extra Careful
Regular Simple Mills shoppers who buy on autopilot are the group most likely to get tripped up, especially if they're used to the core Fine Ground Sea Salt or Rosemary & Sea Salt crackers being vegan and assume the same for the Farmhouse Cheddar variety sitting next to them on the shelf. Anyone stocking a pantry for a fully vegan household should also double check the Sweet Thins line by flavor, since only the honey-based Honey Cinnamon and Lemon varieties are excluded — other Sweet Thins flavors in the lineup are vegan. Bakers using the mixes for a vegan dessert table need to plan for the egg and butter substitution themselves, since the box directions default to the non-vegan version even though the dry mix supports a vegan result.
Where to Buy and What It Costs
Simple Mills products are widely available at mainstream grocery chains including Target, Kroger, Whole Foods, and Sprouts, as well as through Amazon and the brand's own website. Almond flour crackers typically run $5 to $6 for a 4.25-ounce box, the Crunchy Cookies run around $5 to $6 per 5.5-ounce bag, and baking mixes are usually priced between $6 and $8 depending on the variety. Prices run noticeably higher per ounce than conventional wheat-based crackers and cookies, which is typical for grain-free, nut-flour-based snacks across the category, not specific to Simple Mills.
Why This Matters Beyond Simple Mills
Simple Mills is a useful case study for a pattern that shows up across a lot of "clean" or "better-for-you" food brands: positioning around one dietary value, like gluten-free or grain-free eating, doesn't automatically mean the brand aligns with a different value, like veganism, across its entire catalog. Paleo-adjacent and grain-free branding in particular tends to assume eggs, honey, and dairy are all fine, since none of those conflict with a paleo framework the way grains do. That's worth keeping in mind any time a brand markets heavily on ingredient minimalism or a specific diet trend without explicitly calling itself vegan — the overlap with a fully plant-based diet is often large, but it's rarely total, and checking each product individually is still the only reliable approach.
It also cuts the other way: a brand can be fully vegan without ever using the word on its packaging, simply because veganism wasn't the organizing principle behind the product line in the first place. The takeaway for shoppers is the same either direction — treat marketing language like "clean," "natural," "grain-free," or "plant-based flour" as a hint rather than a guarantee, and use the ingredient panel or an explicit vegan callout as the actual source of truth before adding something to the cart. That single habit — checking the panel instead of the branding — is really the whole story behind every 'Is X Vegan?' question this site covers, Simple Mills included.
Final Verdict
Simple Mills is vegan-friendly but not a fully vegan brand, and the gap between those two things is narrow enough to trip people up if they're not checking labels. The good news is that the exceptions are limited to a short, specific list — two cracker/snack items with dairy, and three sweet items with egg or honey — while the vast majority of the lineup, including the flagship almond flour crackers and crunchy cookies, is vegan as sold. For a shopper who wants to keep buying from this brand without re-reading every box, the safest habit is simply looking for the printed "Vegan" callout every time, rather than assuming based on past purchases.
Vegan-Friendliness Rating: 7.5/10 — most of the lineup is genuinely vegan and clearly labeled, but the handful of exceptions sit close enough to the vegan products in packaging and positioning that they're worth double-checking every time.
