How Chobani has scaled its brand 1 year after acquiring La Colombe
As one of the largest yogurt brands around, Chobani wants to position its products as a natural source of nutrients for people who are trying to make healthier food choices.
One of the biggest focuses for Chobani is to provide a differentiated take on the high protein trend that’s taken over food and beverage. To cater to this demand, Chobani is growing its line of zero-sugar, high-protein yogurt cups and drinks this year by adding more sizes and protein grams per serving. And after acquiring coffee brand La Colombe for $900 million toward the end of 2023, Chobani has also focused on improving and scaling the coffee brand, which complements Chobani’s creamer line. In an interview with Modern Retail at Expo West 2025, Chobani chief customer officer John Frost discussed the company’s growing product lines, both within its Greek yogurt business and the La Colombe coffee line.
How are you growing the Chobani product lines to reflect Americans’ changing dietary preferences?
We see four big macro trends across the U.S. that are impacting the consumer right now. No. 1 is that consumers are looking for more protein. But within that, fresh protein is on the rise, whether it’s Greek yogurt or eggs or different elements within dairy. The second is that they want high protein but also low sugar. That is a magical combination when you combine it with a third, which is natural ingredients. The last one is just affordability and accessibility, where people are doing the math on the price per gram of protein they can get.
What are some of your new products that cater to these trends?
This product line here — the 15, 20 and 30 [grams of protein products]. This product line has existed for about four years. We used to call it Chobani Complete, but we redid the packaging too prominently call out the grams of protein. What you also get in this bottle is billions of probiotics and 70% of the B12, potassium and calcium you need. It’s lactose-free and retails for around $2. This product line is doing so well that we needed more of a family of items. This business doubled for us last year and it’s going to double again this year. So we have a very long lineup of options in this arena.
How else are you providing versatility across your product lines to cater to emerging trends and recipes?
Within our products there’s an element of customization. It’s one of the reasons we have taps of creamers and La Colombe cold brew here, so when consumers come up, we can say, ‘What type of combination would you like?’ One of the sticking points that came post-Covid is this element of, ‘I want to know what’s in my food, and I want to make my food customized the way I enjoy it.’
Speaking of La Colombe, what’s your product development strategy for the grocery line?
Our La Colombe product line primarily originated from a specialty coffee line within the cafes. It’s about bringing that into La Colombe cans or a single-serve product that can be a cafe experience in a can. We took our best food science from Chobani and combined it with La Colombe to give you a real authentic cafe experience. Take this new S’mores latte as an example. We infused our dairy science, including our enzymes, so we’re actually able to move sugar into fiber and move lactose into lactic acid. One of the challenges in the ready-to-drink coffee category is sugar. This product has 16 grams of sugar, which is about 50% less than most of the RTDs out there.
And what are your plans for scaling the La Colombe brand nationally?
We have a sales and distribution agreement with Keurig Dr Pepper — so they’re distributing this because they have national reach across virtually every store in America. We are in the process of getting this product line out more prominently. Last year was a big year for us because we got critical distribution in select mass and grocery retailers. This year is big for us because we’re getting into convenience and into the dollar channels. We also have a direct relationship with our retail players in the natural channel, because this line is made with all natural ingredients.
Chobani has always been prideful in the fact that we want to be ahead of the consumer with our food. We invest many of our resources across the company in making sure of that, and this is a big moment for us. It’s not just a combination of Chobani and La Colombe. There is also this dynamic of consumers actually looking for these options now, which gives us a great opportunity to get into consumers’ households.