Cottage Cheese Got a Makeover | Left Hand Agency CPG High Five
My husband does not like cottage cheese. Growing up, his mom would put a scoop of it in the middle of a canned peach and call it dessert. He’s still upset about it! It makes sense because as a child of the 80’s, I watched my mom count Weight Watchers points and cottage cheese was a popular menu item.
Our moms were not alone. Cottage cheese took off as a diet food in the 1950s and peaked in the early 1970s, when the average American ate about five pounds of it a year. After its peak popularity, yogurt came in with fun flavors and stole its mojo. Since 1975, yogurt consumption per person grew sevenfold while cottage cheese fell by half.
Cottage cheese hit bottom in 2022 and has climbed every year since. Sales are now over $2.2 billion, up almost 17% in the past year. Protein got cool, TikTok figured out you could blend cottage cheese into basically anything, and GLP-1s certainly contributed to the resurgence of this category.
Today some brands are literally facing supply problems! Twenty years ago there were about 80 cottage cheese plants in the U.S. Sales dropped for decades, so plants closed and the industry got caught flat-footed. Good Culture fans have compared hunting for a tub to the Hunger Games. Daisy is building a $1.2 billion plant in Des Moines to keep up with demand.
Meanwhile, ricotta is standing in the corner of the dairy case wondering when its turn is coming (pro tip, it’s got way more to give us than a lasagna layer).
Here are five brands giving cottage cheese its glow-up.
1. Good Culture
This is the brand that made cottage cheese cool again, and I am a card-carrying fan. Back in the day, I used to drain my cottage cheese through cheesecloth like a 1870s homesteader, because I could not deal with the runny, watery stuff. (Eww). Good Culture solved that and the texture is dynamite. Thick curds, real flavor, and a label that doesn't look like it came from a hospital cafeteria.
Dollar sales have nearly quadrupled in three years, and private equity firm L Catterton took a majority stake in February. They've had trouble keeping up with demand, and they just started making product at a new partner plant in Michigan to help. When your biggest problem is making enough, you're in good shape!
2. Cotto
These are whipped cottage cheese dips in flavors like french onion, garden ranch and buffalo. The founder, Kendall Kransdorf, tested flavors with local customers before launching, and people mostly wanted savory.
I am most people! I make a lower fat buffalo chicken dip with cottage cheese that I would put up against anything at a Super Bowl party. Cotto just saves you the blender cleanup. My favorite part is her own pitch for it: it doesn't look like cottage cheese.
3. Smearcase
They make "FroCo," which is frozen cottage cheese, with about 40 grams of protein a pint. The name is what cottage cheese was called in the U.S. in the 1800s, which is not my fave but I respect the throwback.
To be clear, my issue with sweet cottage cheese was never the sweet part. It was the pineapple chunks and the canned peach, the whole 1970s-housewife-on-Weight-Watchers plate. Turn it into ice cream and I'm willing to give it a try. They just launched nationwide at Sprouts, and the founder is aiming for about 1,500 doors by the end of the year.
4. Curd
This is a cottage cheese pudding with 17 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber per jar, sweetened with dates. Founder Monica McClellan came up with it three months after having her second baby, when she needed something to get her through mornings with no sleep. Flavors include banana coconut cream pie and chocolate creme.
It just launched at Pop Up Grocer, and her bigger goal is to do for comfort food what Goodles did for mac and cheese. It's early so we’ll see where this goes. Banana flavors are having a moment too so I hope this takes off.
5. Mulu
This is the only brand on the list with a giant behind it. Dairy Farmers of America, the biggest dairy co-op in the country, added it to its portfolio this year. It has 18 grams of protein per half cup, made with a two-layer mix of whey and casein.
I'm not a fan of the name. It sounds like an indie sneaker brand or a meditation app. But I'd still try it. And the fact that big dairy is building new brands in this aisle is a strong indicator that this category has more room to grow. Big co-ops don't spend money on a fad.
Also worth a look: KURD. It's still pre-launch, but they're building in public on LinkedIn and teasing three flavors. They call themselves "the only protein condiment," and their website is literally called Mayo Graveyard.
Will we someday put cottage cheese on a turkey sandwich instead of mayo? My gut says the mayo fans will balk, but five years ago I also would have told you nobody was going to eat cottage cheese ice cream.
So is Cottage Cheese comeback a Fad or finally getting its due?
I lean toward getting its due, with a small asterisk. Plants cost a billion dollars and take years to build, and nobody does that for a TikTok trend. But the protein craze won't be this loud forever, and some of these dips and pints will have to prove people want them for the taste and not just the macros.
Also worth noting: store brands are still the biggest winner in the aisle, so the fancy tubs haven't won yet. I'm genuinely excited to see where this category is in a few years.
Here's what gives me hope. My husband still won't eat cottage cheese on its own. The canned peach scarred him for life. But he'll go back for thirds on my buffalo dip, and he knows exactly what's in it. That's the whole comeback in one guy. Cottage cheese didn't need to change people's minds. It needed to stop showing up looking like cottage cheese.
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