15 Largest Yogurt Companies And Brands In The World

Yogurt is the perfect packable snack to throw in a bag and take on the go. It’s made from fermenting milk with bacteria, which sounds like a recipe for disaster, but produces an incredibly versatile food.

With a variety of flavors ranging from sweet and fruity to decadent and chocolatey, it’s no wonder that yogurt volume sales equated to 3.37 billion pints in 2016. A statistic that’s only risen with time.

In the yogurt industry, there are a few big contenders for the largest companies and brands.

1. Dannon Jobs (Overview)

2. Chobani Jobs (Overview)

3. Fage Jobs (Overview)

4. Tillamook County Creamery Association Jobs (Overview)

5. Stonyfield Farms Jobs (Overview)

6. Clover Sonoma Jobs (Overview)

7. Anderson Erickson Dairy Products Jobs (Overview)

The 15 Largest Yogurt Companies and Brands in the World: A Closer Look

1. Dannon. Headquarters: Horsham, Pennsylvania

   Dannon, or Danone internationally, is a yogurt company with 100 years of history. Isaac Carasso originally kickstarted the brand in 1919, naming the business after his son Daniel. After ten years, the business headquarters migrated to Paris where it remains today.

   It wasn’t until the 1950’s that Dannon became popular in the United States, being marketed as an easy, healthy alternative to snack food. By the 1980s, Dannon was selling almost half a billion containers of yogurt every year. Dannon started making their products more kid-friendly in the 1990s, a marketing strategy that hadn’t been attempted by their competitors before.

   The company’s success has only continued to grow over the past 25 years. Their business has absorbed several other well-known dairy producers in the United States, such as Activia, DanActive, and Oikos.

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2. Chobani. Headquarters: Norwich, NY

   The story of Chobani is one of an impressive and speedy rise to success. Chobani was founded only 16 years ago by Hamdi Ulukaya as a food processing company that specialized in yogurt.

   Ulukaya took advantage of a plant that was being sold by Kraft Foods and made it the home of Chobani strained Greek-style yogurt. With a few key employees to create the best yogurt on the market, the product officially went live in 2007.

   It took less than five years for Chobani to sell over $1 billion in yogurt. A figure that officially made them the top seller of Greek yogurt in the United States. In the years after their quick rise to yogurt power, the company received the Lausanne Index Prize-Supreme Award in 2020 and introduced ice coffee in their brand’s products.

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3. Fage. Headquarters: Strassen, Luxembourg

   Fage is a multifaceted dairy company that initially became known for its Greek Yogurt. The business originated as a storefront in Athens, Greece owned by Athanassios Filippou that quickly rose in popularity among locals for their rich yogurt recipe.

   By 1954, Ioannis Filippou, Athanassio’s son, brought the business into wholesale yogurt distribution. A decision that landed the company as the #1 dairy distributor in Greece.

   In 1974, the Fage name had grown so enormously that the first, and current, Fage factory was constructed. Over the years, new dairy products were introduced to the brand’s line-up, such as milk and cheese. They expanded their sales beyond the borders of Europe, and eventually, reached North America.

   The company’s headquarters were moved out of Greece to Luxembourg in 2012, and Fage has been chugging along to the tune of half a billion dollars in revenue a year ever since.

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4. Tillamook County Creamery Association. Headquarters: Tillamook, Oregon

   Earning its name from the place where it all began, Tillamook County Creamery originated as a cheese producer in 1909. It was a collective of several local creameries who joined forces to maintain the quality of their city’s cheese. Throughout the 1900s, Tillamook broadened its business and popularized its name across the United States.

   The company started including other dairy products, like ice cream, milk, and sour cream. It wasn’t until 1994 that their yogurt finally hit the scene. Despite Tillamook yogurt’s late arrival, it maintained a steady part of its business into 2021.

   The brand now sells Greek and creamy yogurt in a variety of delicious flavors, like Mountain Huckleberry and California Peach.

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5. Stonyfield Farms. Headquarters: Londonderry, New Hampshire

   The history of Stonyfield Farm isn’t as lengthy as some of their competitors, but it’s equally as impressive. Stonyfield Farm was founded in 1983 as a subsidiary of the Rural Education Center, owned by Samuel and Louise Kayman.

   It began as an attempt to provide high quality and natural products to consumers, but most importantly educate the public about environmental sustainability.

   The yogurt from Stonyfield was an absolute hit. Within a year of the company’s inception, they’d outgrown their humble single farm production and ended 1985 with over $300,000 in sales.

   Demand for Stonyfield Farm yogurt continued to grow and by the 1990s their profits had quadrupled. In 2001, Stonyfield Farm was sold to Dannon, which pushed the company into an international spotlight.

   Over the past 20 years, Stonyfield Farm has gone from making $70 million a year when it was purchased by Dannon, to an estimated $500 million. A solid 7% increase.

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6. Noosa. Headquarters: Bellvue, Colorado

   This is another yogurt company that’s named after its hometown of Noosa, Australia, where co-founder Koel Thomae is from. While Koel grew up in Noosa, she was living in Colorado when she brought the recipe there. In 2008, she met a dairy farmer named Rob Graves, and thus, the beginnings of Noosa yogurt were in action.

   By 2010, the brand released its first yogurts in four flavors to the public. Every year, Noosa continues to add more products to their roster, and now are seen in mainstream grocery stores across the country. In 11 short years, Noosa yogurt went from being a concept to a multi-million dollar company.

7. Clover Sonoma. Headquarters: Petaluma, California

   After a few name changes over the years, the company landed on Clover Sonoma for the final name of this multi-million dollar dairy company. It’s also been known as Clover Stornetta Farms, Clover Organic Farms, and Clover since its establishment as a dairy producer in the early 1900’s.

   During that time, its main product was milk. It wasn’t until 1977 that the company diversified its brand to contain yogurt, ice cream, and other dairy products. They recently celebrated 20 years of being American Humane Certified.

   In addition to their accomplishments in producing organic products, their estimated annual revenue is pretty competitive, too.

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8. YoCrunch. Headquarters: Naugatuck, Connecticut

   This company’s yogurt is distinct because its package contains an assortment of crunchy toppings in addition to the cultured milk. YoCrunch hit the market as a subsidiary of Yofarm in 1991.

   The simple product of yogurt that came with granola blew up and by the following year, it was winning awards for being the best new dairy product of the year.

   Over time, they’ve added many more flavors to their brand and partnered with big names in the candy world to provide tasty mix-ins, like Mamp;M’s, Reese’s Pieces, and Oreo.

9. Anderson Erickson Dairy Products. Headquarters: Des Moines, Iowa

   There’s something comforting about knowing your dairy products are coming straight from a family-owned farm, and Anderson Erickson Dairy fits this description to a T. The company was formed in Des Moines, Iowa in 1930 with the big benefit of their product being that it was produced by quaint farms.

   Throughout the years, Anderson Erickson Dairy has maintained its daily business with the same values. It’s still family-owned and producing excellent yogurt and milk products from happy cows.

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10. Yoplait. Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minnesota

    Most people recognize the iconic six-petaled flower that represents Yoplait’s logo. But, did you know that that design was meant to represent each original creator of this yogurt giant? Yoplait was formed in 1965 as the communal efforts of six dairy cooperatives in France as a way to market their products on a national scale.

    Yoplait’s yogurt made its way to North America in 1974 when Michigan Cottage Cheese Co. bought the rights to create it in the United States. It didn’t take more than a couple of years for a larger conglomerate called General Mills to buy-in.

    General Mills didn’t completely absorb the controlling share of Yoplait until 2011 and continues to be its producer today.

11. Siggi’s. Headquarters: New York, New York

    Another fairly recent company, Siggi’s established their brand of Icelandic style high-protein yogurt in 2005. The creator, Siggi Hilmarsson, started making a version of yogurt native to his homeland of Iceland called skyr for himself because the products in the United States contained too much sugar and artificial ingredients.

    Siggi decided that the yogurt was more than just a family recipe and formed a business. Siggi’s has been thriving ever since.

    The two main branding techniques of Siggi’s are still being honest about their process. Their products do not contain any artificial perseverative, flavors, or sweeteners, and all their dairy products are sourced responsibly from family-owned farms.

    Even though Siggi’s was bought by a large French dairy company called Lactalis, it continues to be run independently with its original values in mind.

12. Voskos Greek Yogurt. Headquarters: Sun Valley, California

    Voskos Greek Yogurt is the youngest company on this list at only 12 years old. Born in California, Voskos totes their traditional recipe as the key to their success. They have a wide range of different kinds of yogurt, including fruit on the bottom blueberry and non-fat apricot mango.

    Between 2013-2015, Voskos increased their business by beginning distribution in large grocery retailers, like Stop amp; Shop, and introducing a national commercial campaign.

13. Brown Cow. Headquarters: Londonderry, New Hampshire

    If you’re becoming a fan of small family-run farm stories, you’ll love the tale of Brown Cow. The Brown Cow company was founded by a family-farm in Ithaca in 1975. The brand was centered around yogurt produced from their brown cow named Lily, which was especially creamy since it came from non-homogenized dairy.

    The company went on for nearly twenty years before being acquired by Stonyfield Farm, which was mostly operated by Dannon at the time.

14. Maple Hill Creamery. Headquarters: Kinderhook, NY

    Maple Hill Creamery also began as a single farm show and turned into a full-blown yogurt business raking in millions annually. Tim and Laura Joseph purchased Stone Creek Farm in 2003, an experience that taught them a lot about the value of grass-fed cows.

    Tim started selling their milk and yogurt products from 100% grass-fed cows in a tiny storefront in 2009. Maple Hill Creamery was a journey that took a few years to get off the ground, but once it did, it soared.

    Today, their yogurts are derived from products of 150 organic upstate New York farms and still hold themselves accountable to the highest dairy standards.

15. Wallaby Organic Yogurt. Headquarters: Broomfield, Colorado

    While vacationing in Australia, an American family discovered a yogurt that was so incredibly tasty that they went home and promptly quit their job to start crafting a company based on the recipe in the United States.

    With that, Wallaby Yogurt was established in 2001. The company highlighted the use of their organic and premium ingredients that practically take you to Australia at first bite.

    While Wallaby isn’t the first name that jumps to mind when thinking of yogurt, they’ve maintained twenty strong years of business and solidified their position in the market.

Author

Sky Ariella

Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.