Consumers today are highly motivated by convenience—and when we say convenience, we don’t just mean grab-and-go. Convenience also sits on the periphery of satiation. It’s not very convenient to eat a meal or a snack and feel like you need another in an hour, after all.
Enter: Protein
Thanks to data from our food-obsessed friends at Tastewise, we can say with confidence that convenience and protein are strongly linked, given that consumers name “healthy, easy and quick” as the top motivations behind high-protein food choices. Ultimately, people just want a simple diet that helps them achieve their nutrition and fitness objectives—and cottage cheese is somewhat of a holy grail in those ways.
We’re seeing that dairy products in general have been surging in social discussions, with yogurts, milk, various cheeses and even whey seeing social indexes of anywhere between 5x the average to a whopping 63.9x the average.
Cottage cheese is being talked about 172% more 👀 than it was a year ago and it’s not hard to see why—it delivers on every key attribute consumers are looking for from nutrition overall (not just protein, but calcium, selenium, and vitamin B-12, too!) to its ever-growing versatility (hello, cottage cheese ice cream, anyone?), cottage cheese is making the comeback of the century.
Although cottage cheese has blown up in social discussions—204% 2YoY—restaurant menus have been taking cottage cheese off their menus, a 6% decline 2YoY. Particularly with the variety of preparations cottage cheese can pull off (blended, baked and sliced are performing 17x, 5x and 8x more in social discussions respectively compared to the general benchmark), it feels like there’s a missed opportunity in foodservice.
The Takeaway
Being able to understand what consumers are looking for and talking about right now – not in 6-12 months from now – is a major step up for many brands in the food space. From ingredients to consumer-packaged goods, S/B’s 70+ years of experience in food paired with the power of data like this will take your business to the next level.
Contact us today – no strings attached – to start a conversation about how we can help move your business forward.