How Icelandic Yogurt Invaded America

http://priceonomics.com/how-icelandic-yogurt-invaded-america/

by ryan_j_naughton • 11 years ago

49 29 11 years ago

priceonomics.com

leoc• 11 years ago

Apparently Iceland has n variations of yogurt-like products but you can't buy condensed milk anywhere.

emj• 11 years ago

Just boil milk a couple of hours and you have condensed milk, very easy at low temps, faster with a hot stir plate.

simonebrunozzi• 11 years ago

This is something I wrote about it a while ago: https://medium.com/@simon/the-not-so-brave-yogurt-of-iceland...

I still don't like that the first impression a consumer has is that the yogurt is made with milk from Icelandic cows, while in reality it's American cows.

zeckalpha• 11 years ago

Shipping, let alone the regulations around that, would make that an unreasonable approach.

justinator2• 11 years ago

I understand your point of view. This, as you well know, is not a isolated incident. Let's take say: Italian Bicycles (since you wrote about Italian Food). Flamboyant owners[0], Italian names[1], and a history of inventive technologies[2], in a bicycle-crazy country.

These days, they're almost all made in Asia[3]. we'd like to think there's a small workshop where there cranked out by hand by craftsman, but that's rare these days - almost mythological [4].

The marketing then yes, is trying to sell you on the dream, or "legacy". But it's all smoke and mirrors. We're all pretty intelligent to understand this, but we want to believe, and we allow ourselves that suspension of belief. That's what the marketing is selling you, and that's what you're buying. You can't scale up Icelandic yogurt from Iceland, to sell to the masses of a country that's many times larger.

[0] http://www.prologuecycling.com/interview-mario-cipollini-cip...

[1] http://cinelli.it

[2] http://www.campyonly.com/history.html

[3] http://italiancyclingjournal.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-of-...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hjCwav452s

pyvpx• 11 years ago

you can still get hand made italian bicycle frames. you just have to know what you're looking for; it's actually not even that hard [0]

[0] http://www.pelizzoliworld.com/products/leggenda-for3/

rch• 11 years ago

I'm squarely in the other camp. I can't remember which brand, but I've seen a commercial that boasts that the milk for their swiss-style cheese is sourced from local cows in Switzerland. Which sounds crazy to me, since the whole idea behind local products is that they were not shipped halfway around the world.

Of course this yogurt company is specifically seeking national distribution, and if the minimum viable batch size for their perishable, niche product is 5000 gallons that's probably best. But I'm still pleased that their milk (or yogurt) is not shipped here from Iceland for no discernible reason.

kaybe• 11 years ago

I'm still waiting for Skyr in Europe/Germany. While this article calls it yoghurt, it's.. not. Maybe I should start an import or production business myself..

On another note, it is really annoying how every country has their own collection of dairy-based products which one cannot get anywhere else and one has to adapt recipies all the time. (It's also nice, because diversity, but still.)

edit: Looks like this year, finally, there will be skyr in Germany. Now to find a supplier..

mikkom3• 11 years ago

Quite interesting that you can't find skyr in germany as one of the first places that sold Skyr in Finland was Lidl..

unimportant• 11 years ago

Mager-Quark is the answer.

mikkom3• 11 years ago

AFAIK skyr is no yogurt, it is a quark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_%28dairy_product%29

ricardobeat• 11 years ago

They mention adding bacterial culture - quark cheese involves none of that. See the link for "yoghurt cheeses" at the end of the article.

mikkom3• 11 years ago

What do you mean it doesn't involve adding backterial culture? Quark is made with it! See for example (first result from google query "making quark")

http://www.cheesemaking.com/Quark.html

I also have no idea why they call it cheese. Quark is very far from cheese (the quark that is sold here is exactly the same as Skyr)

Panino• 11 years ago

Nice story, especially about the company's beginnings.

I encourage people to try their hand at making yogurt. It's a little time consuming (proper prep, timing, temperature monitoring, cleanup), but otherwise easy and the result is so satisfying. For me, the cost is about the same (if using expensive milk at 2x the price of "normal" stuff), but again it's all about satisfaction.

It's partly about the value of understanding one's food, and partly that with only a little practice, it's difficult to find better tasting yogurt at the store.

jivardo_nucci• 11 years ago

Very easy recipe (takes about an hour, mostly waiting for milk to cool):

- Buy a container of your favorite _plain_ yogurt and a gallon of milk,

- Boil the milk in a pan,

- Cool milk until it is warm (usual baby formula test - you can drop it on your forearm w/o hurt),

- Add the plain yogurt and stir well,

- Cover pan and put in a warm place, e.g., inside your unlit gas oven (pilot light should be running) and forget about it for 8-12 hours,

It will become thick tasty yogurt. Save some for the next batch.

jqm• 11 years ago

Agreed. Its even better if the homemade yogurt is strained. I got one of these a few months ago and have been mightily impressed.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DDXWX0Q

I strain the yogurt down much thicker than even Greek yogurt sold in stores. It's great on a sandwich, as a mayo substitute, dressings etc. I have experimented with a number of different starters from commercial yogurts and each has a slightly different flavor. Homemade yogurt really is very good and worth a try.

jmr0• 11 years ago

Very happy to hear this. Having visited Iceland last week, I was very impressed with their dairy products in general. Coming from the US, the first morning I opened a small container of Smjör butter I was convinced they had added Yellow 5 to it, but it just seems to be the product of healthy grass-fed cows.

jnaglick• 11 years ago

This article is marketing for a yogurt company disguised as journalistic content, not an analysis of how new foods are introduced to America.

philwelch• 11 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

WiseWeasel• 11 years ago

But it's a different kind of yogurt! I might have died never even knowing such a yogurt (or is it a quark?) could exist were it not for this article... or what quark is.

IkmoIkmo• 11 years ago

Yeah kind of lame. It's an article by CircleUp, which is where this yoghurt company raised their capital. Founder/funder articles are nice to read if they're insightful, but this is just marketing fluff. I mean hell it doesn't just take the story, but even the picture right from the company's marketing page.

Biggest insights are: Whole Foods essentially committed to a buy-in before they had the product, they took an Icelandic recipe, used 'mystery machines' about which they can't say anything because it's IP, and some more stuff on how Whole Foods is nicer than everyone else, that's as deep as it gets.

If this was Show HN: Contentmarketing done right, I would appreciate it more :)

Xophmeister• 11 years ago

I noticed they recently started selling skyr in my local supermarket, in the UK. I was so excited! I had it on a trip to Iceland several years ago and have been trying to find it ever since... It was a bit disappointing; not how I remember it, even against the Icelandic consumer stuff (rather than the fancy restaurant versions). Oh well :P It's not bad and it's pretty good in a nutritional sense.

Pephers• 11 years ago

Skyr is everywhere in Denmark now. Every supermarket is selling skyr, and you can even buy it in 7 Eleven. It's quite remarkable how fast this product has established itself.

applecore• 11 years ago

At the time, most Whole Foods stores already stocked one other skyr yogurt, Siggi's, which had launched a few years prior to Smári Organics.

Shouldn't this story be about Siggi's, then?

xeromal• 11 years ago

The article mentions that they don't use the equipment actual Icelandic yogurt needs.

hugi• 11 years ago

You don't need specialized equipment. I used to make skyr at our local dairy back when I was a kid (in Neskaupstaður, East Iceland), the equipment we used for our method of production was:

1) A large metal vat for the milk to ferment in.

2) Burlap bags that the fermented milk was drained into.

3) A large open top metal tub with wire racks on top, stored in a cooler.

The burlap bags were placed on the wire rack and the whey (mysa) allowed to drain from the bags for a couple of days. When the curds were almost free of whey, the Skyr was scooped from the bags and sold. Not exactly a high tech process.

herge• 11 years ago

They don't have a fancy PR agency...

jleyank• 11 years ago

I don't have a tub in front of me, but skyr.is is available in some of the Whole Foods markets in the US. I think this is made in Iceland and imported, and it tastes like I remember from visiting. Siggi's is pretty good, but I think it states made in the US (no tub of that, either, sorry).

How Icelandic Yogurt Invaded America

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