In 2005, Kraft Foods decided to close its yogurt plant in South Edmeston, Chenango County. It shut down an 85-year-old dairy processing operation, threw 55 employees out of work and added a new chapter to the story of fading economic fortunes in Upstate New York.
Today, South Edmeston is the epicenter of the skyrocketing supermarket category of Greek yogurt. Since late 2007, the former Kraft plant about 60 miles southeast of Syracuse has been home to Chobani, the best-selling Greek yogurt in the United States.
The plant now has 600 employees (and growing). It sold about $500 million worth of yogurt in the past year, a 206 percent year-over-year increase. It consumes more than 2.8 million pounds of milk (enough to fill roughly 50 tanker trucks) each day. That’s helped spur a mini-resurgence in New York’s dairy industry.
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