Cottage industry: How Gen Z and social media are driving the resurgence of cottage cheese

Tinned fish, once typically tucked between the melba toast and canned beets in retirees’ pantries, has become a hot item with Gen Z, thanks to viral social media videos that have sung the praises of sardines and smoked trout from trendy new brands like Fishwife.

Now cottage cheese, whose popularity peaked when it was a dieting staple back when the Bee Gees topped the charts, is enjoying a similar resurgence with younger consumers, driven by some unlikely recipes that blew up on TikTok.

Curd it through the grapevine: A May TikTok video from cookbook author Jake Cohen  featuring a recipe for cottage cheese cookie dough (to be eaten uncooked) has garnered 5.9 million views.

Another recipe that has taken hold on TikTok is cottage cheese ice cream, as has the notion of combining it with mustard:

• Videos tagged #cottagecheeseicecream have been viewed 42.3 million times on TikTok, while #cottagecheesecookiedough has 19.2 million views and #mustardandcottagecheese has 14.1 million.
• The #cottagecheese tag has surged to 814.6 million views on TikTok, eclipsing its dairy display case neighbor #sourcream (322.4 million) while still well shy of #yogurt (3.1 billion).

Influencers, rather than brands, are dreaming up many recipes, but brands are capitalizing on the trend. And some are struggling to keep supermarkets stocked.

“The demand is higher than we would have been able to expect at this moment in time,” Arielle Knutson, SVP of marketing at dairy product brand Good Culture, told Retail Brew. “It can be difficult to find Good Culture [cottage cheese]…at retailers but we are hard at work to solve that.”

Dairy king: In the 1970s, cottage cheese was popular with dieters and was reportedly the lunch President Richard Nixon ate—with pineapple and a glass of milk—just before he went on national TV to announce his resignation in 1974.

• Americans ate 4.6 pounds of cottage cheese per capita in 1975, according to USDA data.
• The per capita consumption of yogurt that year was just 2 pounds.

But later that decade, yogurt began a steady climb while cottage cheese declined, with yogurt consumption surpassing cottage cheese from 1985 onward.

And the trend has continued:

• In 2020, cottage cheese per-capita consumption dwindled to about 2 pounds.
• Yogurt’s per-capita consumption in 2020 was more than seven times that, almost 15 pounds.

A curd to the wise: Good Culture was introduced in 2015 with the mission to “disrupt what was a sleepy and pretty stagnant category,” Knutson said.

The brand gained B Corp certification in 2020 for its commitment to the environment, communities, and employees, and being “mission-driven” is “something that resonates with Gen Z,” Knutson said.

So Good Culture—which has expanded to make other dairy products with active cultures including sour cream, cream cheese spread, and milk—was already on a mission to burnish cottage cheese’s image and appeal to younger consumers when the product went viral.

“In this moment, we’re getting a lot of TikTok tailwinds…and it’s exploding,” but “we’ve been quietly at work over here since 2015 because that was the moment when we believed this could be a really big deal,” Knutson said.

Stirring things up: Good Culture has developed some of its own unexpected recipes for cottage cheese, including—brace yourself—one for cottage cheese fudge brownies. But Knutson said that some of the most viral recipes today are “incredibly organic,” meaning they were completely invented by TikTok users, including cottage cheese ice cream.

But the brand, naturally, capitalizes on the trends when they take off, such as featuring a cookie dough recipe on its Instagram page.

• Another brand, Kalona SuperNatural, features recipes for blueberry ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough made with cottage cheese on its Instagram channel, too.

The yum and the restless: Videos for unusual cottage cheese recipes often hit the same beats as those for unusual food combos or recipes, including the recent trend of making ice cream sandwiches out of two McDonald’s hash browns and an Oreo McFlurry: The TikTok users are extremely dubious—sometimes even nauseated—by the idea, then are won over by the unexpected toothsomeness.

When it comes to cottage cheese, this has been true not just for the recipes, but for simply tasting cottage cheese out of the container, which some TikTok users are doing for the first time—or for the first time since it was foisted on them as kids.

“I certainly wish that the stigma around cottage cheese was smoother to overcome,” said Knutson, who attributed that stigma to cottage cheese historically being a “diet food” that implies you’re “depriving yourself if you’re choosing to eat it.”

But today, brands like Good Culture are promoting the notion that “when it’s done well, it’s delicious,” Knutson said. “It’s not your grandma’s cottage cheese.”