If cottage cheese ever had a golden moment, it was during the First World War, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture created a poster that read: “Eat more cottage cheese, you’ll need less meat.” The reason was simple: a pound of cottage cheese supplied more protein than a pound of beef, pork or fowl—and was lighter on the pocketbook. There was just one problem: eating a pound of the lumpy, sour-smelling stuff.
One hundred years later, the war long over, cottage cheese is now in a battle for dairy-aisle relevance. The average Canadian today consumes nearly three times as much yogourt as in 1995, and eats an extra 1.5 kg of cheese, but takes in 20 per cent less cottage cheese, according to Statistics Canada. Annual sales for cottage cheese are now $118 million, according to data from consumer research firm Nielsen Canada (not to be confused with the dairy brand Neilson)—a $9.5-million drop from just five years ago.
When Gay Lea Foods, the Canadian dairy product producer, conducted a study of its products, it found cottage cheese was perceived as “grandma’s food” and the chewy texture didn’t appeal to younger customers. It couldn’t help that it’s also compared to cellulite. “People would say: ‘I just can’t put it in my mouth,’ ” says Rob London, a senior product manager with Gay Lea. Their product was losing much sought-after shelf space to yogourt, which has adapted to customer tastes with an abundance of flavours, sizes and forms: chuggable bottles, the Greek yogourt invasion. Untainted by fruit flavours or new packaging, cottage cheese was the dairy-aisle equivalent of the blackberry, which toils in isolation while its popular cousins—blueberries, raspberries, strawberries—partner with yogourt, sorbets, cream cheese. Several years ago, Gay Lea tried adding fruit on the bottom—such as peach—to its Nordica brand cottage cheese, but it didn’t take off. To win back shoppers, there was only one fix: get rid of the clumps.
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