Yogurt Nation

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The category, like the yogurt, has not always been smooth and palatable. A maverick, yogurt rode with the Mongol horde, flourished in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia and has been cultured by generations around the globe. Then pale, viscous and teeming with live bacteria, it arrived from the fringes into the fridges of health nuts. When Yoplait Original appeared on shelves in 1977, "you had to be a committed health-food person to eat it," says General Mills CEO Steve Sanger. Yoplait had to convince Americans that they would love its signature creamy texture, but it also had to keep its marketing from diving too deeply into the froufrou. Mills positioned Yoplait's brand, with a wink and a nod, around French culture and used marketing techniques equally foreign to the early '80s such as hot-air balloons and vans parked at marathons for tastings. "'Real Americans,' guys like Jack Klugman and Tommy Lasorda, would eat this stuff with a skeptical look and then burst into French extolling its virtues," recalls Sanger. "It got the point across."

But in the mid-1980s, General Mills realized that the real Americans eating their yogurt from those slim, tapered cups were women in their 20s and 30s. A low-fat version of the Original followed in 1987. Sales soured in the early 1990s as yogurt struggled to define itself as an everyday snack and dessert, although many consumers saw it more as just a diet food. Eventually, consumer tastes caught up with yogurt's image, and a growing concern for fitness turned yogurt into what Sanger calls "a lifestyle badge."

Life has been sweet ever since. Retailers such as Whole Foods Market have seen yogurt's shelf space nearly triple, with more than 40% sales growth over the past five years, the result of increased demand for cups, quarts, drinkables and everything from thick, Greek-style yogurt to water-buffalo-milk, goat's-milk and soy-milk varieties. Last year 3 out of 4 U.S. households spooned, drank and squeezed billions of dollars' worth of yogurt, an average of 5 lbs. per person--a paltry amount compared with the 40 lbs. the average Frenchman consumes.

To Yoplait, less is more. "The buying rate and household penetration are low, about 46%, [but] the mix of people eating yogurt will be widespread," says Robert Waldron, Yoplait division president. Yoplait's foray into the kid category with Go-Gurt in 1998 may have seeded generations of growth. Moms in the suburbs outside Minneapolis were among the first to toss the 2.25-oz. tubes full of such flavors as Strawberry Splash to children who, sans spoons, squeezed it on the go. Five years later, kids ages 8 to 12 were choosing yogurt as a snack 8 1/2 times as often as in 1998. Among adult consumers, 70% are women and 30% men, while boys and girls eat about equal amounts, a shift that bodes well for yogurt's future.

Food-marketing expert Balzer says yogurt's appeal is its convenience. "Yogurt has this wonderful halo of health, but the ease is what drives the category. In the mid-'80s, pizza was the food of the day. Today it's yogurt," he says. "Clearly it's a structural change in the way we're eating." Yoplait's goal, says Waldron, is to get yogurt into more meals and snacks during the day, on more days of the week.