Nutritional science for mind health products
DSM Nutritional Products
The kefir manufacturer has announced a distribution agreement with U.S. Foodservice for ten Lifeway products destined for restaurants and facilities in the Chicago area, but it intends to expand beyond the Midwest.
In addition to making healthier, on-the-go food easily accessible for consumers, Lifeway is also looking to benefit from the growing interest in probiotics in North America. This trend crossed the ocean from Europe, where the concept of friendly bacteria is now part of mainstream nutritional marketing.
"Americans spend nearly half of every food dollar on meals prepared away from home," said Lifeway president and CEO Julie Smolyansky. "That makes the foodservice market a strong potential area of growth for us, particularly with the rising interest in healthy eating in general and kefir and probiotics in particular."
Kefir is a probiotic dairy beverage similar to yogurt. However, Lifeway says kefir culture contains ten active microorganisms, compared to the two or three found in yogurt.
A recent Datamonitor report, Functional Food & Drink Consumption Trends, found that probiotic drinks and yoghurts were leading the entire US functional foods category which was valued at US$21.3bn in 2006.
Food giant Danone initiated probiotic advertising for its Activia line in North America, paying the way for smaller players.
Since Activia yogurt's launch in January 2006, it has surpassed the $100m mark in retail grocery sales in the US. Based on this success, the dairy giant recently launched three new probiotic-delivering products for the US market: Activia Light nonfat yogurt, DanActive dairy drink and Danimals with Lactobacillus GG( LGG).
Lifeway is now taking expansionist steps with U.S Foodservice and looking to access some of this interest in portable probiotics.
"This agreement is an important first step in reaching that market and building a completely new revenue stream that will help us continue growing the company," said Smolyansky.
The U.S. Foodservice claims to be the second largest broadline foodservice distributor in the country, with an alleged 95 percent of the nation having access to their products. As such, Lifeway aims to take its healthy dairy across the country by means of the new alliance.
In 2006, Illinois-based Lifeway acquired its competitor Minnesota-based kefir maker Helios, giving it a secure top place in the US kefir market.
The kefir manufacturer markets three flavors of its branded ProBugs kefir for children and has numerous other single-serve natural and organic kefir. Lifeway has also been targeting Hispanic American communities with their functional products, such as its yoghurt drink called La Fruta.