UK cottage cheese sales boom as social media craze drives demand

Robert Graham, chief executive of Graham’s Dairy, at its factory in Cowdenbeath, Scotland. The company is looking to expand its production capacity. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

If you peered into a UK fridge in the late 1970s, it is more than likely you would have found a pot of cottage cheese tucked between the prawn cocktail and sherry trifle.

A popular “diet food” at the time, demand waned in subsequent decades as the high-protein, low-fat wonder food fell out of fashion. But 50 years on from its heyday, cottage cheese is making a comeback in the UK, and has become an unlikely hit with health-conscious Gen Z.

Driven by a wave of social media influencers sharing inventive recipes for the dairy product, which is made from milk curds, UK retailers are reporting significant increases in sales, while producers are struggling to keep up with demand.

“It’s come from absolutely nowhere,” said Robert Graham, managing director of Graham’s Family Dairy. “Since May of last year, when there was a TikTok craze that went on, cottage cheese sales for us are up 40%.”

The company said the growth in production, the equivalent of an extra 2m kilograms a year, means it is looking at ways to increase output, including an initial growth plan to invest £5m to bolster its production facilities.

“We are considering new factories because cottage cheese production is almost full,” said Graham, whose company supplies big retailers such as Co-op, Morrisons and Aldi.

Dairy company Arla is also benefiting from the cottage cheese rush, reporting a double-digit increase in sales in the last three months, while Marks & Spencer experienced a 30% increase compared with last year, and Waitrose reported a 22% year-on-year rise.

Health-conscious food influencers are driving take-up with eye-catching recipes, from cottage cheese ice-cream to frittatas.

The most popular invention though, has to be cottage cheese cookie dough.

Posted in May 2023 by chef and bestselling author Jake Cohen, the video of his concoction, which also included protein powder, went viral securing millions of views and spawning dozens of copycat recipes.

Nutrition coach and influencer Holistically Stevi’s TikTok recipe for cottage cheesecake has been watched 3.1m times. She uses a blender to blitz together the key ingredient with maple syrup and protein powder, before adding broken biscuits to the top.

The TikTok channel Foods We Love to Eat shared three ways to combine it with toast, including cottage cheese bruschetta and cottage cheese and fig jam, notching up 2.3m views.

Due to its high protein content, the dairy product was promoted by the US government as a direct replacement for meat during the first world war.

Black and white posters produced to educate and inform the public featured the claim that one pound of cottage cheese gave you more protein than a pound of beef, lamb or chicken.

Nutrition expert Ursula Arens believes that today’s revival could be due to the growing number of diet plans that look to eradicate carbohydrates and boost protein intake.

She said: “In the past few years, there’s been a sort of whispering campaign that the more protein you consume, the more bulked and muscly you’ll look.”

Jimmy Dickinson, owner of Longley Farm, which has seen a “steady increase” in cottage cheese sales of about 10% over the last couple of years, remembers the previous boom.

Longley Farm became one of the first companies to start producing cottage cheese in the UK in the 1970s. Dickinson’s father, Joseph, had the idea after seeing US servicemen chowing down their curds while he was serving in the Navy during the second world war.

“We’ve ridden this very long rollercoaster,” said Dickinson of the rise and fall in cottage cheese’s popularity.

He said: “In the 1970s the sales were focused on slimmers trying to lose weight before their holiday to Spain, now the interest is very much, ‘I’ve just swum 50 lengths, and I’ll eat cottage cheese as my protein fix at the end of it.’”

For Marks & Spencer the cottage cheese craze has resulted in a double win. Not only are sales up by 30% this year, but it has also boosted its social media hits too.

A recent video posted on its Instagram feed, in which influencer Em the Nutritionist shares her hot honey and cottage cheese toast recipe, has amassed 4m views.