As we wrote about in our State of the Industry report last month, consumers love their cheese and are eating more of it, but prefer all-natural varieties. And convenience and portion control are driving innovation. Sales numbers are up almost across the board in the natural cheese category, while processed cheese sees promise in the cheese spreads segment, where sales have ticked up.
In the natural cheese category, dollar sales rose 0.7% to $12.8 billion and unit sales increased 4.5% to 3.8 billion, according to Information Resources Inc. (IRI), Chicago, for the 52 weeks ended Oct. 2, 2016. In the processed cheese category, dollar sales dropped 4.9% to $2.9 billion and unit sales were down 6.1% to 782.6 million.