Going Beyond Greek in the Yogurt Aisle

Competition in the yogurt aisle is fiercer than ever before, and not just among the “Greek yogurt”-driven powerhouses Chobani and Dannon (Oikos). Other brands are seeking to introduce different styles of healthful — and seemingly ethnic — yogurt to capitalize on fast growth in this market. Siggi’s, for example, is a New York-based company whose “Icelandic-style skyr” low-sugar, high-protein yogurt has been a hit in Whole Foods.

Late last year, Siggi’s received a 25% investment stake from Swiss-based dairy conglomerate Emmi, which revealed that Siggi’s had an estimated $17 million in sales in 2013. Not bad for a company founded by a former Deloitte consultant (like this blog’s author!) that in 2010 was doing only a half million in sales.

Meanwhile, Noosa yogurts’ bold and brightly-colored tubs are likely a familiar site to shoppers in Target, which has the brand in national distribution. An increasing number of big retailers in the past couple years have also picked up the brand, which got its start on Whole Foods shelves in the Rocky Mountain region in 2010.

Noosa is produced in Colorado with milk from a local dairy farm but bills its product as “Aussie-style yoghurt” because the company was co-founded by Australians ex-pats and it uses the recipe of that country’s Queensland Yoghurt. (The inspiration came about from Koel Thomae, a former supply chain manager at IZZE, trying the product on a trip back to her home country.)

COO Wade Groetsch claimed in a January 2014 article that his brand was the fastest growing yogurt in the country, and revealed that year-over-year sales grew 260% in 2012, and 130% in 2013, while the company was up to 68 employees. Noosa doesn’t publish their sales figures, but based on Nielsen scan data, they will hit $60 million in sales this year — and that’s not counting sales in natural and specialty retailers like Whole Foods not tracked by Nielsen.

G’day, indeed.