Cottage cheese shortages spread as demand outpaces supply nationwide

Cottage cheese has moved from an ordinary grocery item to a product that is increasingly hard to find as demand has outpaced supply nationwide. Good Culture, a Texas-based newcomer, said the mismatch has become severe enough that it is unable to keep up with orders even after a period of explosive growth.

The company’s sales revenue has roughly quadrupled over the past three years, and it reached more than $200 million in retail sales in 2024. Jesse Merrill, a founder and the chief executive of Good Culture, put the shortfall bluntly: “We are servicing less than 50 percent of demand, because we can’t keep up.”

That pressure points to a broader shift in the dairy case, where cottage cheese has gone from a niche staple to a product attracting far more attention from shoppers than suppliers expected. For retailers, that has meant empty spots on shelves and a tighter inventory picture for a food that once rarely drew notice. For producers, it has meant trying to scale output fast enough to match a surge that has outstripped planning.

Good Culture’s rapid rise offers one of the clearest examples of the strain. The company’s growth has been steep enough to put it into a very different category from the one it occupied only a few years ago, but the pace of demand has still exceeded its ability to supply the market. Merrill’s statement suggests the company is filling only a fraction of the orders it is receiving, a sign that shortages are not limited to one store or one region.

The shortage also underscores how quickly a food trend can reshape the supply chain. Cottage cheese, long treated as a routine refrigerator item, is now drawing enough demand to challenge production capacity at a national level. Until supply catches up, shoppers are likely to keep encountering a product that is suddenly much harder to find than its familiar place in the dairy aisle would suggest.