CURD COMEBACK

TikTok’s Cottage Cheese Obsession Sends Dairy Companies Scrambling

“We are constantly sold out,” Peder Tuborgh, CEO of Arla, said.

Cottage cheese, once a staple of 1970s diet culture, has made an astonishing comeback, catching dairy producers off guard as they struggle to keep up with demand. Tesco, the U.K.’s largest supermarket chain, said sales had tripled over the past two years to reach a record high, calling the product a “fully fledged culinary phenomenon.” Meanwhile, in Australia, supplies have disappeared quickly from store shelves. The boom has been linked to wider fitness trends, a focus on gut health, and high-protein diets. Social media also amplified the craze, with TikTok users promoting recipes that folded cottage cheese into everything from pizza bases to chocolate desserts. “We are constantly sold out of cottage cheese,” Peder Tuborgh, CEO of Arla, Europe’s largest dairy cooperative, told Bloomberg last week. “The magnitude of that trend has been quite astonishing. We are desperately looking for more capacity in that area.” At Scotland’s Graham’s Family Dairy, a £3.5 million ($4.7 million) expansion boosted cottage cheese production capacity by half, but managing director Robert Graham said demand still outpaced supply.