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WHAT'S HOT
Take Five, Elsie
Mad cows? Growth hormones? Health craze? Whatever the reason, milk is out, soy milk is in. Sales of pasteurized soy milk more than doubled their share of the refrigerated milk-products market last year, from 0.3% in 1999 to 0.7%, at milk's expense, says Susan Ruland of the International Dairy Foods Assn. In fact, the leading brand, Silk, is flying off the shelves so fast that some cities are reporting shortages.
Why? Fresh soy milk is low-fat, low-cholesterol, bovine-hormone free, full of protein--and it tastes like milk. Silk has had sales almost triple over the past year, from $30 million to $81 million, after its privately held producer, White Wave of Boulder, Colo., put it in milk-like cartons in 27,000 dairy sections nationwide. That's despite the fact that Silk costs more than double what milk does. Randy Rose, manager at Dehof's Key Market in Redwood City, Calif., sells 10 cases a week. "That's really high for a milk substitute," he says. "Everyone is drinking it."
Adherents of the growing Not Milk campaign (www.notmilk.com), who blame milk for everything from allergies to cancer to early-onset puberty, are ecstatic.
But the National Milk Producers Federation isn't. It is awaiting response to a February, 2000, letter to the Food & Drug Administration in which it asserted that soy milk is mislabeled. "The law says you don't got milk if it doesn't come from a cow," says a milk producers' spokesman. For the time being, though, consumers are moo-ning over the alternative.
By Ann Therese Palmer
Article from Business Week Magazine, Issue Date: 4/09/01
Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Used with permission of BusinessWeek.com |
