Cottage cheese cookie dough. Cottage cheese ice cream. The recipes are outlandish but viral, and brands are benefitting.
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...Now cottage cheese, whose popularity peaked when it was a dieting staple back when the Bee Gees topped the charts, is enjoying a similar resurgence with younger consumers, driven by some unlikely recipes that blew up on TikTok.
Curd it through the grapevine: A May TikTok video from cookbook author Jake Cohen featuring a recipe for cottage cheese cookie dough (to be eaten uncooked) has garnered 5.9 million views.
Another recipe that has taken hold on TikTok is cottage cheese ice cream, as has the notion of combining it with mustard:
Videos tagged #cottagecheeseicecream have been viewed 42.3 million times on TikTok, while #cottagecheesecookiedough has 19.2 million views and #mustardandcottagecheese has 14.1 million.
The #cottagecheese tag has surged to 796.8 million views on TikTok, eclipsing its dairy display case neighbor #sourcream (322.4 million) while still well shy of #yogurt (3.1 billion).
Influencers, rather than brands, are dreaming up many recipes, but brands are capitalizing on the trend. And some are struggling to keep supermarkets stocked. “The demand is higher than we would have been able to expect at this moment in time,” Arielle Knutson, SVP of marketing at dairy product brand Good Culture, told Retail Brew. “It can be difficult to find Good Culture [cottage cheese]…at retailers but we are hard at work to solve that.”
Dairy king: In the 1970s, cottage cheese was popular with dieters and was reportedly the lunch President Richard Nixon ate—with pineapple and a glass of milk—just before he went on national TV to announce his resignation in 1974.
Americans ate 4.6 pounds of cottage cheese per capita in 1975, according to USDA data.
The per capita consumption of yogurt that year was just 2 pounds.
But later that decade, yogurt began a steady climb while cottage cheese declined, with yogurt consumption surpassing cottage cheese from 1985 onward.
And the trend has continued:
In 2020, cottage cheese per-capita consumption dwindled to about 2 pounds.
Yogurt’s per-capita consumption in 2020 was more than seven times that, almost 15 pounds.
A curd to the wise: Good Culture was introduced in 2015 with the mission to “disrupt what was a sleepy and pretty stagnant category,” Knutson said.
The brand gained B Corp certification in 2020 for its commitment to the environment, communities, and employees, and being “mission-driven” is “something that resonates with Gen Z,” Knutson said...
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