We did a report on yogurt because of Greek yogurt, which has been a huge trend and a real eye-opener for the food industry overall. We found in measuring the size and growth of the Greek yogurt segment that it grew by 50% in the last year to two point five billion. That's billion with a B. This is a category which barely existed in the US in 2005, and only started getting traction in 2006. So you have a market, a segment, within a mature category, in a large category, that goes from virtually zero to 2.5 billion in about six years. That is a pretty amazing story. With the growth of the Greek yogurt segment in context of the overall yogurt category, Greek yogurt is now right out a third of the overall category and it keeps notching up, even through first quarter of 2013. That's up from only about a quarter of the category in 2011, and again, as virtually an upstart as recently as 2006. Yogurt is known globally as a health product and health is the driver for sales growth in the food product today, globally. That's why you have companies like PepsiCo moving in to the yogurt market. Their dollar sales strategy is to increase the sales of their nutritional snacks and beverages, so PepsiCo, who we don't associate, at least not yet, with yogurt, has moved into this market. Because there's so much potential because of what we call the healthy halo around yogurt. Greek yogurt has its own nutritional story to tell. It's further strained compared to the yogurts that we're traditionally used to here in the States. What that means is that it's denser and has higher protein. Protein gives you that nutrition plus also it can be very useful for the sense of feeling full, which is useful for appetite control; weight control. So even though it's higher calorie than conventional yogurt, because it's higher protein, it really has good quality calories there for the consumer. The other really important thing about Greek yogurt in today's marketplace is that it's very much a product with a story, with a history. It's a very traditional product, various cultures around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, and therefore it ties into our interest now in Mediterranean foods generally and in the Mediterranean diet, which has had some really positive clinical health reporting, although it doesn't really follow the traditional guidelines of what we should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating in terms of US culture. So it really is a product with a history, with a tradition. It's rooted in a region. And it goes to that feeling that you wanna have products that are in some way artisanal or homemade, you know, the kind of products that traditionally have been made and fed to families. They're not just products that can only be made in a factory. When we went into the yogurt report with our focus on Greek yogurt, we knew that the market was to some degree beginning to peak because it had been so successful. So one of the questions we asked ourselves is, what's gonna happen now? What's happening next? What are the lessons from Greek yogurt? The immediate lesson is a sense of copying Greek yogurt. And so we see Greek yogurt sort of spreading its wings across the supermarket. The most immediate place, and logical place, is into ice cream, frozen yogurt, gelato, frozen novelties, that whole sort of section in the supermarket, you're beginning to see Greek yogurt products pop up. And sometimes it's a very literal expansion from the yogurt category. You have marketers like Stonyfield, who are known for their organic yogurts, doing frozen organic yogurt. And that makes sense. But you have really all kinds of marketers popping in, including, for example, Ben and Jerry's, which now has a Greek yogurt product line, including some of the sort of jazzy fruit flavors that you might expect from Ben and Jerry's, but also some very untraditional flavors, for example, banana peanut butter, which is probably not something the Ancient Greeks envisioned. But you do have all kinds of marketers kicking in and taking advantage of the Greek yogurt craze, including for frozen products and including for frozen novelty products for children, taking advantage of that healthy halo that comes with any kind of yogurt product.
In a Nutshell - Greek Yogurt, Frozen Greek Yogurt; Food, Diet, and Nutrition [Packaged Facts]
We did a report on yogurt because of Greek yogurt, which has been a huge trend and a real eye-opener for the food industry overall. We found in measuring the size and growth of the Greek yogurt segment that it grew by 50% in the last year to two point five billion. That's billion with a B. This is a category which barely existed in the US in 2005, and only started getting traction in 2006. So you have a market, a segment, within a mature category, in a large category, that goes from virtually zero to 2.5 billion in about six years. That is a pretty amazing story. With the growth of the Greek yogurt segment in context of the overall yogurt category, Greek yogurt is now right out a third of the overall category and it keeps notching up, even through first quarter of 2013. That's up from only about a quarter of the category in 2011, and again, as virtually an upstart as recently as 2006. Yogurt is known globally as a health product and health is the driver for sales growth in the food product today, globally. That's why you have companies like PepsiCo moving in to the yogurt market. Their dollar sales strategy is to increase the sales of their nutritional snacks and beverages, so PepsiCo, who we don't associate, at least not yet, with yogurt, has moved into this market. Because there's so much potential because of what we call the healthy halo around yogurt. Greek yogurt has its own nutritional story to tell. It's further strained compared to the yogurts that we're traditionally used to here in the States. What that means is that it's denser and has higher protein. Protein gives you that nutrition plus also it can be very useful for the sense of feeling full, which is useful for appetite control; weight control. So even though it's higher calorie than conventional yogurt, because it's higher protein, it really has good quality calories there for the consumer. The other really important thing about Greek yogurt in today's marketplace is that it's very much a product with a story, with a history. It's a very traditional product, various cultures around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, and therefore it ties into our interest now in Mediterranean foods generally and in the Mediterranean diet, which has had some really positive clinical health reporting, although it doesn't really follow the traditional guidelines of what we should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating in terms of US culture. So it really is a product with a history, with a tradition. It's rooted in a region. And it goes to that feeling that you wanna have products that are in some way artisanal or homemade, you know, the kind of products that traditionally have been made and fed to families. They're not just products that can only be made in a factory. When we went into the yogurt report with our focus on Greek yogurt, we knew that the market was to some degree beginning to peak because it had been so successful. So one of the questions we asked ourselves is, what's gonna happen now? What's happening next? What are the lessons from Greek yogurt? The immediate lesson is a sense of copying Greek yogurt. And so we see Greek yogurt sort of spreading its wings across the supermarket. The most immediate place, and logical place, is into ice cream, frozen yogurt, gelato, frozen novelties, that whole sort of section in the supermarket, you're beginning to see Greek yogurt products pop up. And sometimes it's a very literal expansion from the yogurt category. You have marketers like Stonyfield, who are known for their organic yogurts, doing frozen organic yogurt. And that makes sense. But you have really all kinds of marketers popping in, including, for example, Ben and Jerry's, which now has a Greek yogurt product line, including some of the sort of jazzy fruit flavors that you might expect from Ben and Jerry's, but also some very untraditional flavors, for example, banana peanut butter, which is probably not something the Ancient Greeks envisioned. But you do have all kinds of marketers kicking in and taking advantage of the Greek yogurt craze, including for frozen products and including for frozen novelty products for children, taking advantage of that healthy halo that comes with any kind of yogurt product.