Four years ago, when the Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, traditional yogurt dominated supermarket shelves. Greek yogurt was a niche product, with little awareness among consumers; annual sales totaled a paltry $60 million. Chobani was an obscure company operating out of a dilapidated Kraft factory in the hills of central New York.
Four years later, it’s a dramatically different scene. Greek yogurt is expected to double last year’s sales, to $1.5 billion. Chobani is owned by Agro-Farma, the leading yogurt manufacturer and a Team USA Olympic sponsor. “Despite the fact that Chobani started five years ago with five people, we are now the No. 1 yogurt brand,” says Doron Stern, the company’s vice president of marketing. “There are a lot of parallels between what we’ve been able to do with our company and what the athletes go through to get where they are.”
Chobani’s 60-second Olympic commercial, which made its debut on July 27 during the opening ceremonies, shows a rural community converging amid green pastures to watch the Olympic Games from a wooden stage built with their own hands. (The scene resembles the opening sequence to the critically acclaimed network drama Friday Night Lights, whose director shot the ad.) “The Chobani story is a community story,” says a man with a warm, slow drawl. “We started with a handful of local employees and a whole lot of heart. The community came together, got stronger. The dairy farmers, the plant workers, the truck drivers. Like our Olympians all worked hard to fulfill a dream.”
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