The next big play in private equity? Lumpy dairy products.
What happened: Consumer-focused PE firm L Catterton is claiming a majority stake in Good Culture, a cottage cheese brand whose sales have surged by ~300% over the past three years. The deal values the brand at over US$500 million, per the Wall Street Journal.
Big picture: Cottage cheese has staged a grocery aisle glow-up in recent years, going from an ick-inducing gloop associated with the elderly and unlucky schoolchildren to TikTok’s favourite protein-packed superfood. It’s so popular that producers have trouble keeping up.
In Canada: Good Culture isn’t available, so domestic brands are reaping the rewards and achieving a new level of cultural cachet. Take Nordica brand cottage cheese, which just last month became the “Official Cottage Cheese of Hockey Canada” — what an honour!
The numbers bear this out. From 2014 to 2023, Canadian cottage cheese production was virtually unchanged. Then, between 2023 and 2024, it jumped by just over 18%.
Canada has also dealt with supply crunches. Recently, in Quebec, high demand paired with a work stoppage at a top cottage cheese plant resulted in product shortages.
Why it matters: Cottage cheese owes its revival not to the restaurant industry, but to creative home chefs who found ways to make a stale product more appetizing. It shows how consumer trends are still regularly driven from the bottom up, not from the top down.—QH
