How Greek yogurt lifted NY dairy industry

When Kraft Foods decided to close its yogurt plant in Chenango County in 2005, it shut down an 85-year-old dairy processing operation, threw 55 employees out of work and added a new chapter to the story of fading economic fortunes in upstate New York.

As it turns out, the move was an economic blessing to the region. Today, South Edmeston is the epicenter of the skyrocketing supermarket category of Greek yogurt. Since late 2007, the former Kraft plant about 60 miles southeast of Syracuse has been home to Chobani, the best-selling Greek yogurt in the United States.

The plant now has 600 employees. It sold about $500 million worth of yogurt in the past year, a 206 percent year-over-year increase. It consumes more than 2.8 million pounds of milk -- enough to fill roughly 50 tanker trucks -- each day.

That's helped spur a mini-resurgence in New York's dairy industry.

"It caught the right wave," said Michael Sansolo, a Washington, D.C.-based food industry consultant. "Consumers are always looking for food that has a different taste, a different vision, plus a health attribute. That can strike a chord. At the moment, Greek yogurt is it."

"Yogurt is simple," Chobani chief executive Hamdi Ulukaya likes to say, frequently adding the company's marketing tagline, "Yogurt is nothing but good."

It took less than four years for Ulukaya to build this phenomenon. He sold a few hundred cases of yogurt, to stores on Long Island, in the first few months after he launched Chobani in October 2007.

Now Chobani ships 1.2 million cases each week, to all 50 states.

Ulukaya, a native of Turkey, was making feta cheese at a plant in Johnstown, Fulton County, when he learned of the empty Kraft plant. It took him two years to put a company called Agro Farma together. He chose the brand name Chobani, which means shepherd in Greek.

Greek yogurt differs from standard American varieties because the liquid whey is strained out of the raw milk, eliminating much of the lactose, plus much of the carbohydrates, salt and acidity. What's left is a yogurt that not only has more tang but also is higher in protein than standard yogurt. That's helped it become a big hit with people on diets, such as the Weight Watchers Points Plus program.

And, like all yogurt, it has the natural probiotic bacteria considered essential to good digestive health.