Danone keeps picking up loose pieces of the US yogurt business in the hopes of becoming an even bigger overall force in a national market that is booming while the company's home domain is slumping.
Paris-based Groupe Danone—parent of Dannon USA—bought YoCrunch, a US brand that makes fun products with toppings such as Reese's peanut-butter and chocolate candy, Oreo cookies and M&Ms. The purchase will add a playful factor to the company's presence in the American dairy case that already includes the Danimals brand for kids.
YoCrunch has had double-digit growth over the last few years even though it has been largely outside the main growth engine in the US yogurt market: Greek-style brands such as Chobani. However, YoCrunch does have a lime Greek yogurt with graham-cracker pieces.
As European consumers opt more for private-label yogurt products in a mature market, Danone has looked around the globe more and more for growth opportunities. In addition to emerging markets, it increasingly has targeted the United States, which is undergoing a late-coming boom in yogurt sales, not all powered by Greek. Dannon already has about 30 percent of the US market and is majority owner of Stonyfield Farm, an organic-yogurt specialty brand.
Danone recently also struck a deal with Starbucks to sell co-branded yogurt through Starbucks cafes and in grocery stores. And a few months ago, Danone acquired Happy Baby, a startup maker of non-yogurt-based fruit and vegetable purees in aseptic packages, and other better-for-you products for American infants and toddlers.
The company's bigger bets on American kids also are a wager on demographics in addition to per-capita growth in yogurt consumption: While America's population keeps growing, in part because of immigration, Europe's keeps slipping. It doesn't take much math to figure that, in the yogurt business at least, the United States has become a much more promising horizon.
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