'French-style' yogurt is unveiled
MINNEAPOLIS — General Mills Monday unveiled a new yogurt product executives hope will disrupt the marketplace like Greek yogurt did a decade ago.
The ambition and stakes are high for the product, called Oui by Yoplait, which is a key part of the company’s turnaround plan for its bruised yogurt portfolio.
General Mills, based outside Minneapolis, calls it a French-style yogurt, saying the product uses a culturing process that is true to Old World heritage but new to U.S. consumers.
“It’s been 10 years really since a new segment has emerged in yogurt, and we think this is what our business and the category needs to get back to growth,” said David Clark, president of U.S. yogurt for General Mills.
Oui by Yoplait faces an uphill battle for consumers’ attention in a crowded dairy aisle.
For months, investors, analysts and media have hounded General Mills for proof its leadership has a viable plan to turn its yogurt sales from negative to positive. For each of the last four quarters, its U.S. yogurt sales by value have fallen in the 10 percent to 20 percent range. Company executives began alluding to Oui, without using its name, in February as proof of a road map.
“We can’t go out and tell our story until we are ready, so we have endured a lot of speculation, a lot of negative stories in the press, a lot of questions about what are we doing,” Clark said. “I’m just so pleased we are able to now come out and share the story about where we are going.”
Packaged in small glass pots, Oui is a product meant to appeal to the individual experience. It is made with fewer ingredients and ones that are non-genetically modified.
Clark says the manufacturing process is what sets French-style yogurt apart from other products all vying to be different on store shelves — be it Icelandic, Bulgarian or sheep’s milk yogurt. Oui is cultured in each individual pot rather than in large vats. The texture is thicker because the yogurt is not stirred or transferred after being heated and cultured. The sturdy glass pots mean that protein is not disturbed, and this entire process means stabilizers like cornstarch or gelatin are not needed.
The production cost is greater, leading to a suggested price of $1.49, slightly higher than most Greek yogurts.
General Mills has a history as an innovation leader in yogurt — being the first to blend fruit and yogurt, the first to put yogurt in a tube and the first to introduce a light yogurt for weight management. But its competitors drove the surge of Greek yogurt over the past decade.
Since then, the company’s yogurt innovations have been incremental, not market changing, and it lost market share to Dannon, Chobani and a swell of smaller brands.
Greek yogurt accounts for about 32 percent of all yogurt chosen by consumers, according to the latest data from NPD Group, a market research firm.
