Chobani Dissed Mass-Market Yogurt. Now It’s Selling It

Since its founding in 2005, Chobani has grown into an almost $2 billion-a-year thorn in the side of the dairy aisle’s established giants. It introduced Americans to Greek yogurt by promoting its thick texture and higher protein content, and now Chobani is the top-selling yogurt brand in the U.S., having surpassed General Mills Inc.’s Yoplait last year. But lately sales of the Greek variety have slowed, falling almost 5 percent in the past year. That’s causing Chobani LLC Chief Executive Officer Hamdi Ulukaya to embrace an unlikely product to fuel growth: conventional yogurt.

Despite having long branded the traditional variety as overly sweet, boring, and stuffed with artificial ingredients, Chobani has begun rolling out Smooth, a set of five flavored yogurts that are lighter and smoother than its Greek variety. The new product line, made with more milk than traditional yogurt but less than Greek-style, is part of Ulukaya’s bid to win over Americans who don’t eat yogurt or have moved on to such things as snack bars or beef jerky. “I knew everybody didn’t want to eat Greek yogurt,” he says. “I’m trying to find a solution for the people who are leaving.”