Globally, cottage cheese sales are on the rise. Joanna Ilczyszyn, Commercial Management at Tetra Pak, explains why it has become an attractive product for today’s consumers – and the opportunities it’s creating for dairy producers in key markets1.
The video starts with an unmistakable southern American dialect “I’m trying out the viral cottage cheese flatbread,” a woman announces to her nearly one million followers. “Y’all, it blew my mind… it is so flippin’ good!”
On the other side of the world, there’s a self-proclaimed online coach who specialises in “simple, hunger-busting recipes for weight loss.” He speaks quickly, with a pleasant Australian accent, showing in seconds how he uses cottage cheese to make a “massive weight-loss frittata.”
A fitness instructor from Norway promises the “strongbody effect” with “delightful cottage cheese pizza buns.” A German baker of “balanced food” offers whole grain hüttenkäse rolls. In New York City, a cookbook author introduces his latest obsession: cottage cheese chocolate chip edible cookie dough2.
Cottage cheese, in short, has become a genre unto itself on social media. If you search TikTok or Instagram, you’re likely to find thousands of recipe videos with these and other similarly creative applications. According to Tetra Pak expert Joanna Ilczyszyn, however, it wasn’t always this way.
“When I started at Tetra Pak in 2006, one of my first projects dealt with cottage cheese for a big producer in Poland,” Joanna says. “Back then, cottage cheese was new in Europe. It was well established in the United States, but here it was these small, individual cups for breakfast that were still super novel.”
In the intervening two decades, consumer perceptions of – and uses for – cottage cheese started to evolve. Today, many see it as a functional food that can provide important nutrients. As Joanna explains, more consumers are on the lookout for low-fat, low-sugar sources of protein, as well as foods with a good pH balance that can aid in digestion. Cottage has become an option that, for some, fits the bill perfectly.
“Cottage cheese typically has a low-ingredient profile, which is attractive for consumers who want clean-label alternatives,” she adds. “Someone looking for high protein may think ‘either I can get powders, supplements or a bar, or I can reach for a cup of cottage.’ It’s easy to buy and eat, and they see it as a ‘natural’ food alternative.”
In Joanna’s telling, that ease of use is key to understanding cottage’s growing popularity. It offers quick sustenance, and it can be enjoyed savoury or sweet, mixed with fruit and honey or vegetables and salt and pepper. Though she also stresses that many consumers have been looking for new ways to cook healthy meals from scratch, which has changed consumer perceptions of cottage as “just” a snack to eat by itself. It’s now also seen as a versatile ingredient that can be incorporated into a wide range of recipes.
It’s here that social media has come to play such an important role. “If I’m a recipe influencer, I’m looking for an ingredient that makes my videos attractive,” Joanna explains. “It’s all very visual. You want something that looks nice or stands out when you open the package and mix it, something that blends well with other ingredients.”
“But they also want to tell a story,” she continues. “They want to say to their followers: ‘here is something fresh and healthy that is easy to prepare, giving you this amount of protein or that amount of fat.” In her view, cottage has given influencers an ingredient that is both visually interesting on camera and tells the right story, leading to an explosion of new recipes online.
The trend, which Joanna calls the “TikTok boom,” has had a noticeable impact on the dairy industry. Consumer demand for cottage cheese has increased along with the rise in online content, and it shows no signs of stopping. Worldwide, CAGR for the cottage cheese subsegment reached 2.49% between 2020 and 2024, with forecasts predicting 3.49% for 2024-2028. In some markets, projected growth is even higher. Australia and the United States are expected to achieve 4.7% and 5.8% CAGR, respectively, during this same period3.
“The majority of product being sold is typical ‘clean’ cottage – just the cream and curds,” Joanna explains. “But we see a growing portion of new products too: cottage flavoured with honey or spicy herbs, cottage for kids, lactose-free alternatives and even cottage fortified with other functional supplements. If you look at what happened in product innovation with Greek yoghurt and skyr, we will see the same thing now with cottage.”
The evolving consumer demand, of course, has led to greater need for supply, creating growth opportunities in key markets in Europe and North America. For existing cottage producers, Joanna advises that the time is ripe for improvements that can modernise production. This can mean increased capacity, but it can also allow for greater hygiene and control, providing quality improvements for a more discerning consumer base.
At the same time, she emphasises that the growing market can create big potential for dairies that hadn’t considered cottage previously. As chilled dairy goes, cottage cheese is a high-margin product, and the barriers to entry are often lower than some might expect. Many plants may already have much of the required technology in place, including both downstream and upstream processing equipment as well as the necessary cold storage facilities.
“Dairies hear us talk about cottage and they say, ‘no, we don’t make cheese,’” she explains. “But this isn’t a soft blue or hard cheese that requires weeks or months of maturation. This is a fresh product. You already understand cold chain requirements and how to produce and pack this. You already have the necessary sales channels in place. If you sell cultured products like functional yoghurts, there is no reason you shouldn’t consider adding cottage cheese to your offering.”
Joanna Ilczyszyn
Commercial Manager for Cheese
Since joining the company back in 2006, Joanna Ilczyszyn has held a number of different positions at Tetra Pak. Today, as the Commercial Manager for Cheese, she combines her background in banking and finance with deep knowledge about the challenges of cheesemaking.
Our cottage cheese solutions make it easy to produce fresh cheese with consistent texture, long shelf life, and the flexibility to add ingredients like fruit or grains for product variety. We support every step of the process, from milk treatment to curd handling, so you can offer cottage cheese that meets high standards for taste and quality.
1 Unless otherwise noted, all information in this article is based on a lengthy 2025 interview with Tetra Pak Commercial Management professional Joanna Ilczyszyn, a dairy processing expert with extensive experience in working with cottage cheese producers in markets across the globe. To learn more about the information featured here, please feel free to contact us.
2 All referenced videos come from Instagram Reels.
3 Statista - The Statistics Portal for Market Data, Market Research and Market Studies