Yogurt in America: The Numbers Behind a Dairy Boom

The US yogurt business at a glance

Yogurt is milk that has been fermented by lactic acid bacteria, which thicken it and give it its sour taste. In the United States it is sold as plain or flavoured cups and tubs, as drinkable yogurt, as strained styles such as Greek and Icelandic skyr, and in frozen form. Federal statistics follow the product from the plant to the plate: USDA counts how many pounds factories produce each month, estimates how much is available per person each year, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks what a typical 8 ounce portion costs in stores.

Those official series tell a clear story. After a long rise in the 2000s and early 2010s, a few flat years followed, and since 2023 output has climbed again to new highs. This report uses only verifiable primary sources. Estimates of the market value in dollars, which vary widely between private research firms, have been left out, and so have brand shares from retail scanner data, which are not public. The strained segment has its own page in our Greek yogurt statistics, so this report treats it only briefly.

Record output: 5.29 billion pounds made in 2025

The Dairy Products 2025 Summary, released by NASS on 24 April 2026, reported US production of plain and flavoured yogurt at 5,288.6 million pounds. That was 414 million pounds, or 8.5 percent, more than the revised 2024 total of 4,874.5 million pounds, which in turn was 6.2 percent above 2023. Two consecutive years of strong growth followed a decade in which output hardly moved.

Three quarters more yogurt than in 2005: after a strong rise to 2010, output stalled for a decade, then jumped to a record in 2025.

The long view shows two growth phases. Between 2005 and 2010 production rose by about 1.18 billion pounds, from 2.99 billion to 4.17 billion, an average gain of almost 7 percent a year. The 2006 total of 3,111.2 million pounds and the 2009 total of 3,832.0 million pounds show how steady that climb was. From 2010 to 2020 the picture changed: output reached 4,645.6 million pounds in 2015 and then slipped to 4,509.9 million pounds in 2020. The latest phase added almost 780 million pounds in five years.

The industry did not need many more factories to achieve this. NASS counted 152 plants making yogurt in 2015, 155 in 2016 and 154 in both 2024 and 2025. Average output per plant therefore rose from about 30.6 million pounds in 2015 to about 34.3 million pounds in 2025, which reflects bigger lines in existing sites rather than a wave of new entrants. The new capacity announced by Chobani and Danone, described below, could push that average higher still.

2026 so far: every month ahead of last year

The NASS Dairy Products report released on 5 October 2026 covers production through August. Plants made 3,723.9 million pounds of yogurt in the first eight months of 2026, against 3,533.1 million pounds in the same period of 2025, an increase of 5.4 percent. Growth has been positive in every month, ranging from 1.6 percent in August to 8.1 percent in May.

Eight for eight: each month of 2026 has produced more yogurt than the same month of 2025, with March the strongest at 492.3 million pounds.

March was the busiest month of 2026 at 492.3 million pounds, almost 32 million pounds above March 2025 and higher than any month in 2025. Output also follows the calendar. In 2025 the four weakest months were January, February, November and December, all below 420 million pounds, and the gap between the strongest month (September, 465.0 million pounds) and the weakest (February, 415.1 million pounds) was about 12 percent.

What does that imply for the year as a whole? If September to December 2026 merely repeat the 1,755.5 million pounds made in those months of 2025, full-year output would reach about 5.48 billion pounds, another record and roughly 3.6 percent above 2025. If the 5.4 percent pace holds, the total would be close to 5.57 billion pounds. Both figures are BusinessStats calculations, not USDA forecasts; NASS does not project yogurt output.

How yogurt compares with the rest of the dairy case

Yogurt was the fastest-growing major dairy product made in US plants in 2025. According to the same NASS annual summary, butter output rose 6.7 percent to 2.39 billion pounds and total cheese, excluding cottage cheese, rose 4.0 percent to 14.80 billion pounds. Frozen categories moved the other way: regular ice cream fell 9.2 percent to 845.1 million gallons, frozen yogurt fell 3.9 percent and yogurt mix 6.1 percent.

Chilled up, frozen down: yogurt led dairy growth in 2025 while ice cream and frozen yogurt both shrank.

On the consumption side, USDA Economic Research Service figures published in December 2025 show the same tilt. Per capita availability of yogurt, frozen excluded, reached 14.5 pounds in 2024, up about 6 percent on 2023 and only 0.4 pounds below the 2013 peak. Cheese held at 41.9 pounds per person, butter reached an all-time high of 6.8 pounds and cottage cheese rose to 2.4 pounds, its highest since 2009, while fluid milk slipped to 127 pounds.

Per capita figures are calculated from supply: production plus imports and stock changes, minus exports, divided by the population. They measure food available for eating, not food actually eaten, because some is wasted. The rise in yogurt per person is also slower than the rise in production, partly because the US population keeps growing; our US population statistics show the denominator behind these numbers. The year-by-year per capita series since 2000 is charted in our Greek yogurt report.

How much yogurt Americans actually eat

Pounds per person can make yogurt look like a large part of the diet. A different ERS measure tells a more modest story. In its loss-adjusted food availability data, which allow for spoilage and plate waste, ERS estimates that Americans consumed about 1.5 cup-equivalents of dairy per person per day in 2021. Cheese supplied 0.74 cups and fluid milk 0.5 cups, but yogurt only about 0.05 cups, even though yogurt intake had grown about fivefold since 1981.

A thin slice: yogurt supplies about 3 percent of the dairy cup-equivalents Americans consume each day, against roughly half from cheese.

Set against official advice, the gap is large. The 2025 to 2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released by USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services on 7 January 2026, keep the recommendation at 3 servings of dairy a day and, unlike earlier editions, emphasise whole and full-fat dairy, naming yogurt among suitable foods. ERS noted that the 1.5 cups consumed in 2021 was about half of the amount recommended for a 2,000 calorie diet under the previous, 2020 to 2025, guidelines.

A second benchmark is the FDA qualified health claim discussed below, which refers to at least 2 cups of yogurt a week. At 0.05 cup-equivalents a day, the average American eats about 0.35 cups a week, or roughly one sixth of that amount. Averages hide wide differences between regular eaters and people who never buy yogurt, but they show how much room the category still has. The age structure that shapes these habits is set out in our data on the US population by sex and age.

Plain, low-fat, skim and fruit yogurt compared

Nutrient content varies more between yogurt types than many shoppers assume. USDA FoodData Central reference values per 100 grams show that plain whole-milk yogurt has 61 kcal, 3.47 g of protein, 3.25 g of fat and 4.66 g of sugars, all of it natural milk sugar. Plain low-fat yogurt has 63 kcal, 5.25 g of protein and 7.04 g of sugars. The skim-milk version has the fewest calories, 56 kcal, with protein at 5.73 g and sugars at 7.68 g.

Fruit adds sugar fast: fruit low-fat yogurt carries about four times the sugars of plain whole-milk yogurt per 100 grams.

Fruit yogurt changes the profile sharply. The USDA entry for low-fat fruit yogurt lists 102 kcal and 19.1 g of total sugars per 100 grams, about 2.5 times the sugars in plain low-fat yogurt; the extra comes from the fruit preparation and sweeteners. In a typical 6 ounce (170 g) cup that is about 32 g of sugars. Calcium, by contrast, is high across all types: 121 mg per 100 grams in whole-milk yogurt, 152 mg in low-fat fruit, 183 mg in low-fat plain and about 200 mg in skim plain.

These reference values are useful for comparison, not as a label for any particular brand. Many newer products are sold on protein content and reduced sugar, and the guidelines now favour whole-fat dairy, which reverses decades of advice that pushed shoppers towards low-fat and nonfat cups. Sugar in other everyday products is compared in our sports drink statistics.

The FDA diabetes claim: limited evidence, 2 cups a week

On 1 March 2024 the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would not object to a qualified health claim linking yogurt with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, provided the claim is worded to reflect limited evidence. The decision answered a petition from Danone North America, filed under docket FDA-2019-P-1594. The claim applies to all yogurts that meet the federal standard of identity, regardless of fat or sugar content.

The scale of the condition explains why the claim matters commercially. The CDC National Diabetes Statistics Report estimates that 40.1 million people in the United States, 12.0 percent of the population, had diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes in 2023, and that 115.2 million adults had prediabetes. A qualified claim is weaker than an authorised health claim, however: the FDA rated the evidence as limited, and the label wording must say so.

The standard of identity referred to in the claim was itself updated recently. The FDA published a final rule on 11 June 2021 that revoked the standalone low-fat and nonfat yogurt standards and modernised the main one, with compliance required from 1 January 2024. The detailed requirements on milkfat, milk solids and acidity are explained in our Greek yogurt report.

Retail prices: from 1.06 to 1.58 dollars per 8 ounces

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has published an average US city price for yogurt, per 8 ounces, since April 2018. It started at 1.057 dollars. The price climbed slowly to about 1.25 dollars by the end of 2020, then rose sharply with general food inflation in 2022 and 2023 and peaked at 1.700 dollars in September 2024, 61 percent above the first reading.

Up by half, then a pause: the average price rose from 1.06 dollars in 2018 to 1.63 dollars in 2024 before easing.

Since then prices have eased and then stabilised. Monthly readings fell to 1.489 dollars in January 2025, and the 2025 average, based on the 11 months published, was 1.526 dollars, about 6 percent below 2024. No October 2025 figure was published after the federal shutdown disrupted data collection. In 2026 the price has moved in a narrow band between 1.498 and 1.587 dollars, and the August 2026 reading of 1.584 dollars is 6 percent above August 2025 but still below the 2024 peak.

An older BLS series for natural fruit-flavoured yogurt, discontinued in 2003, shows the long-run trend: 8 ounces cost 0.449 dollars in January 1980 and 0.813 dollars in March 2003. The two series are not directly comparable, because the product definition changed, but together they suggest the price of a cup has risen about three and a half times since 1980. For the wider inflation context see our monthly US inflation rate data.

Who makes the yogurt: deals and new plants

Three groups shape the US yogurt aisle: Danone, Chobani and, since 2025, Lactalis, the French dairy group that bought the Yoplait business in the United States. None publishes US yogurt sales separately, so company figures below come from deal announcements, results releases and investment statements, not from market share data.

The biggest change of recent years was the exit of General Mills. On 12 September 2024 it agreed to sell its yogurt operations in the US and Canada to Lactalis and Sodiaal for 2.1 billion dollars in cash. The business, which included Yoplait, Liberte, Go-Gurt, Oui, Mountain High and :ratio, had net sales of about 1.5 billion dollars in fiscal 2024 and plants in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Reed City, Michigan and Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. The US part went to Lactalis on 30 June 2025, after it had brought in roughly 1.2 billion dollars of General Mills revenue in fiscal 2025.

Chobani, founded in 2005 and privately owned, is investing most heavily. In March 2025 it began an expansion of its Twin Falls, Idaho plant worth about 500 million dollars, adding more than 500,000 square feet to reach 1.6 million square feet with 24 production lines. The company said the project would raise output there by 50 percent and create at least 160 jobs on top of more than 1,200 employees, and that it expected to buy nearly 2 billion pounds of Idaho milk in 2025. In October 2025 it raised 650 million dollars of equity to help fund Twin Falls and its new Rome, New York, factory costing 1.2 billion dollars.

Danone, owner of Dannon, Oikos, Activia and Light and Fit, reports North America as a separate region. That region had sales of 6.32 billion euros in 2025, with like-for-like growth of 2.0 percent, slowing to 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter. It also includes coffee creamers and plant-based drinks, so it is not a yogurt figure, but Danone said its high-protein yogurt range kept growing by double digits in the quarter while the rest of its yogurt portfolio was still a work in progress. In August 2025 it announced an expansion of its yogurt plant in Minster, Ohio, which makes Oikos, Activia, Dannon and Danimals, adding about 48,000 square feet and 30 jobs and lifting its milk purchases there by 60 percent over the following years.

Taken together, the announced projects point to a substantial increase in US capacity from 2026 onward. NASS data will show whether demand keeps pace; so far the 5.4 percent rise in 2026 output suggests it is. Food manufacturing in a neighbouring market is the subject of our report on the food industry in Mexico.

Frozen yogurt: output down by almost half since 2005

Frozen yogurt is counted separately by NASS, in gallons rather than pounds, and its trend runs opposite to chilled yogurt. Production was about 65 million gallons in both 2005 and 2006, peaked at 74.2 million gallons in 2015 and then fell to 66.9 million gallons in 2016. By 2024 it had more than halved to 35.5 million gallons, and in 2025 it slipped again to 34.1 million gallons.

Half the volume of a decade ago: frozen yogurt output fell by more than 50 percent between 2015 and 2025.

Production in 2026 has been almost flat: 23.8 million gallons from January to August, 0.3 percent more than a year earlier. In 2025 NASS counted 59 plants making regular and low-fat hard frozen yogurt and 21 making the nonfat kind. Ice cream, the larger frozen category, also shrank in 2025 and is featured in our ranking of the top ice cream brands. Both trends contrast with the growth of chilled yogurt.

Related markets: Greek yogurt and Canada

Greek yogurt, made by straining or by adding milk protein, drove the growth of the 2000s and remains the engine of the protein trend. Because USDA counts Greek and regular yogurt together, official data cannot measure its share. Its nutrition, the New York production base, the acid whey by-product and the Chobani Rome plant are covered in detail in our report on Greek yogurt in the US.

North of the border, the General Mills sale reshaped the market too. Sodiaal, the French dairy cooperative, took over the Canadian business, including Liberte and the plant in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, in January 2025. Canada runs a supply-managed dairy system with its own statistics, so its figures are not comparable with USDA data; they are set out in our analysis of the Canadian yogurt market.

Global context: the US against Europe

There is no official global count of yogurt production, because many countries do not report it separately. The European Union is the best-documented comparison. Eurostat reports that EU dairies produced 7.8 million tonnes of acidified milk products, mainly yogurt, in 2023, a year in which EU farms produced 160.8 million tonnes of raw milk. Germany accounted for 27 percent, the Netherlands for 17 percent and Poland for 10 percent.

Converted to metric units, US production of about 2.40 million tonnes in 2025 is roughly 30 percent of the EU total, although the EU category is broader and also covers other fermented milks. On the company side, Danone reported global sales of 27.3 billion euros in 2025, of which 13.2 billion euros came from its Essential Dairy and Plant-Based division, with like-for-like growth of 3.5 percent. For the population behind these markets see our world population figures.

Outlook: more capacity, and a test of demand

Official data point to a third consecutive year of growth. With US production up 5.4 percent to August, 2026 is on course for a new record of roughly 5.5 billion pounds, based on the BusinessStats scenarios above. The final figure will come in the NASS annual summary in April 2027, which may also revise 2025.

Three forces are likely to shape the next few years. New capacity from Chobani in Idaho and New York and from Danone in Ohio will add supply. Dietary guidance has turned in favour of whole-fat dairy and protein, and the FDA claim gives brands a regulated way to talk about diabetes risk. On the other side, retail prices remain about 40 percent higher than in 2019, and per capita intake, while rising, is still slightly below its 2013 peak. How consumers respond to price will be visible first in the monthly NASS reports and BLS price data, and is worth reading alongside the energy drinks and other functional categories competing for the same snack occasions.

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