Danone enters $1B yogurt mix-in category with healthy focus

Danone is entering the $1 billion yogurt mix-in category with healthy offerings that the dairy giant says will attract snacking consumers who are turned off by similar products they see as indulgent.

The food and beverage giant is launching its mix-in platform under the Remix banner. It will be rolled out initially to three brands within its yogurt portfolio that each cater to specific nutritional needs: Light + Fit with low calories, Oikos with high protein and Too Good & Co. (previously called Two Good) with low sugar.

Rafael Acevedo, president of Danone’s North American yogurt business, said in an interview that many people are reluctant to purchase existing mix-in products because they feel they aren’t healthy and they don’t have some of the attributes they are looking to add to their products. He estimated that 40% of the yogurt mix-in market comes from packaged items; the rest is done by consumers at home.

“There’s a massive segment of consumers right now that are not participating in the category because they feel like it’s a category that is too indulgent,” Acevedo said. “We want to transform that.”

Each brand will initially have three mix-in flavors. Oikos, for example, has Coco Almond Chocolate; Light + Fit features Strawberry Cheesecake and Too Good & Co. offers Blueberry Almond Oat Crisp.

By launching mix-in products that have low sugar, high protein, or low calories, Danone is confident it can attract consumers to the yogurt category and further expand the usage occasions of its brands. Yogurt traditionally has been relegated to breakfast, but the addition of mix-ins brings it deeper into snacking during other times of the day.

The new mix-ins come as Americans are snacking more than ever, with an estimated 90% doing it one to three times a day. At the same time, Danone noted that nearly half of consumers say they’re trying to eat healthy. The overlap creates a prime market opportunity for Remix.

Acevedo said rather than simply creating mix-ins for each brand, the establishment of the Remix name allows Danone to build scale it can pitch to retailers as well as a single snacking-forward message to communicate with consumers. He said Danone plans to eventually “leverage” Remix into other yogurt brands it owns.

Danone’s Remix is the latest product in the yogurt category that allows dry ingredients to be added immediately before consumption.

Among the most popular is Chobani’s Flip, which did more than $450 million in sales for the 52 weeks ended March 16, according to Nielsen data provided by the company. Flip, which debuted a decade ago, experienced a 7.5% year-over-year increase in sales during the same period, outpacing the total yogurt category’s growth of 7.2%.

The debut of Remix also coincides with a repositioning by Danone of its popular Two Good brand launched in 2019.

Initially, the Two Good name was a reference to the two grams of sugar in each yogurt cup. But as Danone expands the brand into new usage occasions like mix-ins, having two grams of sugar will not always be feasible. It decided to tweak the name to Too Good & Co. to highlight its taste and better-for-you profile as a brand with less sugar than other products on the market.

Acevedo said some launches, like the Too Good & Co. mix-ins with six grams of sugar, will have more than two grams of the sweetener. Other products could have less.

“Too Good is one the brands in the portfolio that is very well positioned for the future of what consumers are looking for,” he said. “We see it as a recruitment juggernaut [for Danone] for the future. We have big plans for this brand.”