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CULTURED PRODUCTS
Highway to Health
by Julie Cook Ramirez
Contributing Editor
Contributing Editor
Makers of cultured products respond to consumer demand for products with added wellness benefits.
The argument could be made
that yogurt always has been a functional food. After all, yogurt first
broke into American consciousness as something consumed primarily by health
nuts and dieters. Over the years, of course, yogurt evolved into a tasty
treat, consumed in all dayparts by people of all ages and backgrounds.
In recent years, however, yogurt has undergone an
interesting metamorphosis. While it should in no way be construed as a step
backward, the category is once again becoming the domain of the
health-conscious. Intense media coverage of obesity and growing instances
of diabetes, coupled with an increasing awareness of the benefits of
probiotics, has lead to the recreation of the yogurt category as one in
which manufacturers and consumers alike are looking for the pathway to good
health in a container of yogurt.
“With the skyrocketing costs of health care,
Americans are looking for ways to proactively manage their health,”
says Gary Hirshberg, president and “CE-Yo,” Stonyfield Farm,
Londonderry, N.H. “Choosing the right foods can be an important part
of that equation.”
As a result, we’ve seen a number of yogurts
unleashed upon the American public that are designed to help treat or
prevent common health problems. Stonyfield manufactures YoBaby Plus Fruit
& Cereal with DHA, deemed an essential building block for optimal
brain and eye development in babies and toddlers. Hayward, Calif.-based
Omega Farms, a subsidiary of Pacific Cheese, sells numerous varieties of
yogurt containing 75 milligrams per serving of EPA/DHA omega-3 fatty acids,
which have been shown to help with everything from arthritis to bipolar
disease. LightFull Foods, Mill Valley, Calif., produces the Satiety
Smoothie, which contains extra fiber to produce a feeling of fullness, thus
promoting weight loss.
Nearly 20 years after being introduced in Europe by
France’s Groupe Danone, Activia — from The Dannon Co., White
Plains. N.Y. — rolled out in American stores. The product contains
billions of beneficial cultures, including the company’s proprietary
Bifidus Regularis, and has been clinically proven to help promote
intestinal regularity. Likewise, Breyers Light! Probiotics Plus Yogurt, now
made by The Breyers Yogurt Co., Naugatuck, Conn. (formerly known as The
YoFarm Co.), contains Bifidobacterium cultures, which have been shown to help maintain the balance
of bacteria in the intestine.
Consumers are clearly responding to those innovations.
Once again, the refrigerated yogurt category had another good year —
up 4.6 percent in dollars and 2.3 percent in units, according to
Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. (IRI).
“What has really spurred the growth in yogurt
recently is the addition of all the functional benefits,” says Adam
Baumgartner, senior marketing manager for retail development at Le Mars,
Iowa-based Wells’ Dairy Inc. “Whether it’s digestive
health, antioxidants, added calcium or something else, people are really
starting to see a benefit.”
Only by drilling down into the category, however, is
one able to get an accurate picture of what’s truly driving category
growth. Sales of Dannon Activia soared a whopping 213.1 percent in dollars
and 171.3 percent in units. No other top 10 brand even came close in terms
of growth.
“Activia has contributed approximately 60
percent of the growth that has taken place in the yogurt category in the
last year,” says Gail Barnes, vice president, fluid innovation, Dairy
Management Inc. (DMI), Rosemont, Ill. “I don’t think I’ve
ever seen a food product that has so quickly become such a runaway
success.”
While Barnes believes strongly that a drinkable
version of Activia would take America by storm, Dannon chief marketing
officer Andreas Ostermayr says the company has no current plans to bring
that particular variety of Activia to the United States. Just one year
after the U.S. rollout of Activia, however, Dannon did launch a light
version of the product in early 2007.
In recent months, Dannon saw rival Yoplait enter the
digestive health segment with the introduction of Yo-Plus, which is also
designed to promote regularity. While Ostermayr is adamant that Dannon is
not concerned about the competition, Yoplait associate marketing manager
Derek Herbst says there are some similarities between the two products.
“Yo-Plus does provide the same benefits as Activia, so in that
sense, you could say they’re going head to head” Herbst says.
“However, there are a lot of things unique to Yo-Plus, such as the
Optibalance ingredient, which is a combination of probiotic cultures and
prebiotic fiber. That’s something you won’t find
elsewhere.”
Dannon, meanwhile, has rolled out more new products
with added benefits. DanActive, for example, is a probiotic drink
containing proprietary bacteria called L. casei
Immunitas, which was specifically developed to
help boost the immune system. “This is another big step into the direction of
products with functional benefits,” Ostermayr says. “We have
high hopes that DanActive will be the next blockbuster for us.”
Dannon also recently boosted the healthfulness of its
Danimals line of drinkable yogurt, adding the probiotic
culture Lactobacillus GG (LGG), which has been scientifically proven to aid in
gastrointestinal function, immune function, and maintenance of oral health
in children.
Danimals also now has 25 percent less sugar. Reduced
sugar seems to be the name of the game for kids’ yogurts these days.
Yoplait’s new Kids Yogurt Drink not only contains omega-3 DHA, it
also has 25 percent less sugar than other kids’ yogurts. Stonyfield
also recently reduced the sugar in all of its kids’ yogurts.
According to Hirshberg, the move came in direct response to consumer
requests.
Wells Dairy recently transitioned its Blue Bunny Lite
85 line to Blue Bunny Light No Sugar Added. According to Baumgartner, the
name change is intended to help consumers quickly recognize the
product’s key attribute: no added sugar. Wells has also added several
new product lines to its arsenal of better-for-you yogurts; they include
Blue Bunny Light Yogurt and Light Omega 3.
“By nature, consumers think of yogurt as a
better-for-you product,” Baumgartner says. “If we can continue
to raise the bar on health and wellness, consumers have shown that they are
willing to jump in with both feet and try the new benefits.”
WhiteWave Foods, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Dean
Foods Co., recently introduced Rachel’s Wickedly Delicious Yogurt,
boasting a vegetarian form of DHA omega-3. Likewise, Breyers Yogurt just
released Smart! yogurt, a line of fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt enhanced with
life’sDHA, also a vegetarian source of DHA omega-3. Said to be
Breyers “most ambitious and health-focused product to date,”
Smart! is available in strawberry, blueberry, mixed berry, peach, black
cherry, red raspberry, pineapple and strawberry-banana varieties.
With sales boosting, makers of kefir, the eastern
European cultured drink containing 10 live and active probiotic bacteria,
have extended their lines as well. Last summer, Morton Grove, Ill.-based
Lifeway Foods Inc. unveiled ProBugs, an organic kefir product geared toward
kids age 2 to 9 years old. Packaged in a patented no-spill 5-ounce pouch,
ProBugs are available in Sublime Slime Lime, Orange Creamy Crawler and
GooBerry Pie flavors.
Recognizing the popularity of Greek style yogurt,
Lifeway also rolled out Greek Style Kefir, a product that Lifeway president
Julie Smolyansky says mimics old-world Mediterranean kefir through the
addition of cream and sour cultures.
Stonyfield also recently introduced a Greek yogurt
dubbed Oikos. Developed through a partnership with Euphrates Inc., a maker
of Greek feta cheese, Oikos has great potential, Hirshberg says.
“It’s indulgence without guilt,” he
says. “It’s one of those ‘I can’t believe
there’s no fat in this’ because it’s a very creamy yogurt
with an incredible mouthfeel.”
Chugging Along
While refrigerated yogurt continues to enjoy healthy
increases year after year, cottage cheese is still struggling just to stay
afloat. Once again this past year, category sales experienced a decline
— down 1.6 percent in dollars and 2.0 percent in units during the
52-week period ending June 17, 2007, according to IRI.
Even in the organic segment, where many dairy
categories have experienced demand so high that it outstrips the supply,
cottage cheese continues to falter, according to Theresa Marquez, chief
marketing executive for Organic Valley Family of Farms, La Farge, Wis.
Citing company research into the matter, Marquez says mass-market cottage
cheese consumers clearly have exhibited that there’s somewhat of a
price barrier when it comes to paying more for an organic option.
“People have shown that they are willing to step
up and pay the premium for fluid milk, but in the mass market, we’ve
yet to see them willing to go the extra step to pay the premium for cottage
cheese,” she says. “There seems to be a price barrier where
they say, ‘Hey, I’m willing to pay for the milk, but
that’s where it ends.”
In Phoenix, Shamrock Farms’ director of
marketing Sandy Kelly blames the flatness of the cottage cheese category on
product inconsistency. Cottage cheese is an art, she says, and many
manufacturers don’t take the time to ensure they are churning out a
product that is essentially the same day in and day out.
“It’s not an exact science where you push
a button and it comes out the same every time,” Kelly says.
“You have to make sure you have the product quality steps in
play.”
At Cabot Creamery Cooperative in Cabot, Vt., director
of marketing Jed Davis cites an image problem as being at the heart of
cottage cheese’s woes. “Cottage cheese has the perception of
being something you eat when you’re on a diet or later in life when
you are not up to chewing through a steak to get your protein,” he
says. “I’ve actually heard people say, ‘I just
can’t bring myself to eat cottage cheese.’ It’s the kind
of response you would expect people to have to Brussels sprouts or
something!”
With that kind of reputation, it’s no wonder
cottage cheese hasn’t been able to garner much attention from younger
consumers. Across the board, cottage cheese makers are confident they could
rapidly increase cottage cheese’s fan base if only they could get
more people to try the product in the first place.
“Cottage cheese is an outstanding
product,” says Jim Lesser, director of marketing, Oakhurst Dairy,
Portland, Maine. “It’s just maybe not sexy enough or glamorous
enough, and we’re going to have to do something as an industry to
figure out a way to get consumers more excited about something that’s
really good for them.”
Two major brands believe they have done just that
— figured out how to make cottage cheese relevant to today’s
health-conscious consumers. Taking a page from the yogurt category, both
Dean and Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft Foods Inc. recently rolled out
cottage cheese boasting the added benefits of probiotics or prebiotics.
Dean’s new probiotic cottage cheese was
introduced this spring in the upper Midwest under Dean’s three
flagship brands: Dean Foods, Country Fresh and Land O’Lakes. Each
serving provides the consumer with a number of friendly bacteria,
specifically Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus casei.
According to Dave Haley, regional director of
marketing, Dean Dairy Group, the product was developed in response to
specific consumer trends. “Our research revealed that probiotics are
one of the major new trends emerging in the food industry,” Haley
says. “We are excited to introduce a great tasting cottage cheese
that is on target for today’s consumer who has an ever increasing
preference for healthy food products.”
Kraft, meanwhile, rolled out Breakstone’s and
Knudsen’s LiveActive Cottage Cheese for Digestive Health in April.
Boasting 3 grams of prebiotic dietary fiber in each 4-ounce serving,
LiveActive is the first cottage cheese product to contain inulin, a
prebiotic fiber source derived from the chicory root. In addition to
helping alleviate common digestive troubles, such as bloating, gas and
irritability, inulin has been shown to aid in calcium absorption.
Shamrock’s Kelly is watching such activities
closely. Adding probiotics and prebiotics to cottage cheese definitely
presents an opportunity, she says, but cautions that great taste must
remain a manufacturer’s top concern. “You have to make sure
that the product meets consumers’ taste expectations,” Kelly
says. “It can be as healthy as can be, but if it doesn’t taste
good, I’m not going to eat it.”
At Cabot, Davis says the dairy’s new closed-vat
cottage cheese system has improved the quality and consistency of its
product. While he maintains that the new equipment gives Cabot
“additional incremental flexibility,” including the ability to
make flavored cottage cheese, Davis concedes there really isn’t
anything noteworthy in the works yet.
“If we saw the flavored side of the business was
just going gangbusters, we would probably be rushing along on that a little
bit more,” he says. “But for the time being, cottage cheese
just keeps chugging along. It doesn’t seem to be going away, but it
doesn’t seem to be doing anything spectacular either.”
Those same words could apply to the sour cream
category, which couldn’t be much flatter. According to IRI, dollar
sales rose a meager 1.1 percent, while unit sales flat-lined.
To increase consumer awareness of the category,
Shamrock embarked on an extensive marketing campaign that includes outdoor
advertising, television and radio spots, featuring company
“spokescow” Roxie (voiced by actress Kathy Najimy)
“chewing the cud” about sour cream. “Organic presents an
excellent opportunity for sour cream,” Kelly says, revealing that
Shamrock’s new organic venture will extend to sour cream later this
year.
Des Moines, Iowa-based Anderson Erickson Dairy Co.,
meanwhile, is targeting its sour cream business to ethnic stores in its
Midwestern markets. Miriam Erickson Brown, president and chief executive
officer, says sour cream consumption has increased as the Hispanic
population has grown in AE’s marketing area. To further expand usage
of sour cream, particularly in cooking applications, the company posts
recipes and serving suggestions on its Web site. Posted alongside them are
serving suggestions for the company’s growing line of refrigerated
dips.
While the category has long struggled with seasonality
— that is, strong demand for dips around the holidays, as well as
football season — Brown says her company has made inroads into the
off-season by encouraging consumers to try different flavors and use dips
in ways they might not have considered, such as on a sandwich.
“It has its spikes, but it’s not like it
just falls off the face of the Earth during the summer months,” Brown
says. “During that time, we have targeted consumer messaging
encouraging people to expand their flavor preferences and try some
different ways to use it.”
TOP 10 INDIVIDUAL YOGURT/YOGURT DRINK BRANDS* | ||||||
$ Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
Dollar Share |
Unit Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
||
Total Category | $3,359.3 | 4.6% | 100.0% | 3,720.6 | 2.3% | |
Private Label | 373.6 | -2.1 | 12.7 | 650.0 | -3.4 | |
Yoplait Original | 369.5 | 3.5 | 12.6 | 548.4 | 3.5 | |
Yoplait Light | 289.3 | 10.5 | 9.9 | 464.1 | 12.8 | |
Dannon Light ’n Fit | 225.5 | 3.0 | 7.7 | 289.6 | 7.4 | |
Dannon Activia | 161.4 | 213.1 | 5.5 | 60.4 | 171.3 | |
Stonyfield Farm | 142.8 | 18.3 | 4.9 | 101.8 | 9.4 | |
Yoplait Go-Gurt | 106.0 | -3.0 | 3.6 | 37.7 | -3.5 | |
Dannon Danimals | 90.9 | -13.3 | 21.5 | 33.8 | -11.4 | |
Yoplait Trix | 90.2 | 1.1 | 3.1 | 35.9 | 2.3 | |
Yoplait Whips | 89.3 | -8.8 | 3.0 | 147.8 | -7.2 | |
* Total sales in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52-week period ending June 17, 2007. SOURCE: Information Resources Inc. |
TOP 10 INDIVIDUAL COTTAGE CHEESE BRANDS* | ||||||
$ Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
Dollar Share |
Unit Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
||
Total Category | $869.1 | -1.6% | 100.0% | 414.3 | -2.0% | |
Private Label | 315.0 | -1.2 | 36.3 | 161.0 | -1.6 | |
Breakstone | 92.6 | 4.3 | 10.7 | 34.8 | 2.8 | |
Knudsen | 72.3 | -4.6 | 8.3 | 26.6 | -5.2 | |
Breakstone Cottage Doubles | 37.5 | 8.6 | 4.3 | 35.3 | 9.8 | |
Friendship | 27.1 | -2.5 | 3.1 | 13.0 | -5.1 | |
Dean’s | 26.8 | -5.6 | 3.1 | 11.7 | -6.5 | |
Hood | 23.6 | -1.7 | 2.7 | 10.0 | -6.7 | |
Prairie Farms | 17.2 | -8.7 | 2.0 | 8.6 | -4.4 | |
Knudsen Cottage Doubles | 15.3 | 14.5 | 1.8 | 12.5 | 16.3 | |
Darigold | 12.4 | 1.6 | 1.4 | 6.0 | -5.7 | |
* Total sales in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52-week period ending June 17, 2007. SOURCE: Information Resources Inc. |
TOP 10 individual refrigerated DIP BRANDS* | ||||||
$ Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
Dollar Share |
Unit Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
||
Total Category | $428.0 | 1.3% | 100.0% | 190.0 | -1.1% | |
T. Marzetti | 84.1 | -0.7 | 19.7 | 27.3 | -2.0 | |
Private Label | 83.8 | 1.8 | 19.6 | 40.1 | -2.5 | |
Dean’s | 47.5 | -1.0 | 11.1 | 27.8 | -0.1 | |
Heluva Good | 31.9 | 1.1 | 7.5 | 17.8 | 5.2 | |
Kraft | 24.6 | -4.5 | 5.8 | 14.8 | -9.5 | |
Classic Guacamole | 17.0 | -4.8 | 4.0 | 4.1 | -7.9 | |
Calavo | 9.1 | 21.6 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 18.3 | |
Santa Barbara Bay | 5.2 | 36.4 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 35.6 | |
Litehouse | 5.1 | -5.3 | 1.2 | 1.7 | -20.0 | |
Salads of the Sea | 5.0 | 1.6 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 6.1 | |
* Total sales in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52-week period ending June 17, 2007. SOURCE: Information Resources Inc. |
TOP 10 INDIVIDUAL SOUR CREAM BRANDS* | ||||||
$ Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
Dollar Share |
Unit Sales (In Millions) |
% Change vs. Year Ago |
||
Total Category | $716.5 | 1.1% | 100.0% | 455.2 | 0.0% | |
Private Label | 199.1 | -1.2 | 27.8 | 154.5 | 0.0 | |
Daisy | 171.7 | 16.2 | 24.0 | 96.3 | 15.7 | |
Breakstone | 102.3 | -1.2 | 14.3 | 66.8 | -4.1 | |
Knudsen Hampshire | 52.4 | -1.8 | 7.3 | 23.5 | -2.8 | |
Cacique | 13.9 | 8.5 | 2.0 | 4.0 | 11.1 | |
Friendship | 12.1 | -13.3 | 1.7 | 9.6 | -16.9 | |
Knudsen | 11.6 | 2.0 | 1.6 | 5.7 | -0.4 | |
Tillamook | 9.8 | 10.9 | 1.4 | 5.3 | 5.1 | |
Dean’s | 8.0 | -12.9 | 1.1 | 5.3 | -12.1 | |
Hood | 7.6 | 3.8 | 1.1 | 5.2 | 0.9 | |
* Total sales in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52-week period ending June 17, 2007. SOURCE: Information Resources Inc. |