Article Archive - March 25, 2005

Feta jumps from Greek salads to supermarket cheese cases

Editor’s Note: Each month, CMN profiles a different cheese in these pages, giving our readers a comprehensive look at production, marketing and sales, as well as any other interesting details we can unearth. Please read on to learn more about this month’s featured cheese: Feta.

By Amelia Buragas

MADISON, Wis. — Feta cheese may have entered the U.S. market as an ethnic specialty cheese, but it wasn’t long before creative chefs were sprinkling crumbled Feta on pizzas, producers were adding flavor to widen its market appeal, and consumers were searching out the cheese in their supermarket aisles.

Today, with yearly retail sales of more than $100 million, many Feta producers say the cheese is poised to leave behind its specialty cheese classification to become a commodity.

• Born in the Greek Isles

Although Feta is widely accepted to have Greek origins, its name is derived from the Italian word for “slice,” a reference to the cheese’s production. Feta traditionally was packed in brine-filled wooden barrels and then sliced into chunks for sale.

It is theorized that the cheese was packed in brine as a preservation technique, an idea with which Clifford Wright, a cook and author specializing in Mediterranean history, partially agrees.

“It probably had something to do with a concept of preservation,” says Wright. “Of course, the other answer is the people who were making it developed a taste for it.”

Wright says there is little historical evidence of Feta’s origins. There are no direct references to a brine cheese in classic texts such as The Iliad. However, according to Wright, there are two recipes in a 14th century Italian cookbook that call for a cheese from Crete that must be washed, a probable reference to Feta which, when rinsed, loses its saltiness and becomes creamier.

Countries surrounding Greece, such as Macedonia, Turkey and Romania, also have a long tradition of Feta production. More recently, France, Denmark and the United States have become major producers of the cheese.

Feta cheese is white and ranges from soft to semi-hard. It has a tangy, salty flavor that ranges from mild to sharp. Its fat content ranges from 30 to 60 percent, with an average of 45 percent milkfat. This varies widely, though, as there is no U.S. federal standard of identity for Feta cheese.

• Feta in the U.S. market

In the United States, Feta eaters can be divided into two categories. There are those who crave the traditional sharp and salty Feta that has been eaten by Greeks for hundreds of years. Yet there also is a robust market for an “Americanized” Feta, reminiscent of traditional Feta, but with a milder taste and lower salt content.

Innovative Dairy Marketing Inc. (IDM), Milwaukee, carries two brands of Feta to appeal to both aspects of the market. The Aegean brand of Feta is a traditional cheese designed for the ethnic market, while the recently-introduced Delphia Feta has a milder flavor that, according to company president Jeff Geygan, was designed for the American palate.

Lynn Pavlic, IDM’s vice president of marketing and sales, says the two brands sell equally well and that there is plenty of demand for both the traditional and the milder cheese.

“It really is a trendy cheese that is in great demand today,” says Pavlic. “Americans really have loved Feta for a lot of contemporary recipes.”

Geygan believes keeping Feta trendy through creativity will continue to push Feta sales in the U.S. upward.

“I think part of it is how sophisticated we can be as manufacturers and marketers to figure out other ways to use our products,” Geygan says. “That is truly the challenge in the industry today — figuring out how this product can be used.”

One way producers enhance the market appeal of Feta is to add flavors. But not just traditional Greek herbs — IDM, for example, has a jalapeño-flavored Feta that, according to Geygan, goes great with nachos.

Ron Buholzer, president of Klondike Cheese Co., Monroe, Wis., says flavors are more popular on the retail end of the market. His company works mainly with the foodservice industry and gets few requests for flavored Feta cheeses.

Historian Wright says adding flavors to enhance raw Feta sales is great, but the most underutilized way to market Feta is as a cooking and baking cheese.

“People forget that it’s a great cooking cheese, not because it melts but for the exact opposite reason. You can bake it and not have it spread all over the place,” says Wright.

• Demographic and sales data

Linda Hook, vice president of marketing for DCI Cheese Co., Mayville, Wis., says Feta sales are somewhat cyclical, with sales increasing during the peak salad months. Hook says the crumbly nature of Feta adds to its consumer appeal.

“Precrumbled Feta that is readily available is definitely a plus; it has a convenience factor which is high on the list of consumers,” Hook says.

In fact, Hook says that according to Information Resources Inc. (IRI) data, crumbled Feta accounts for more than half of all scannable retail sales of the cheese.

The typical consumer of Feta cheese, according to Hook, is a college graduate, has a yearly income greater than $30,000, is 45 to 64 years old and lives in a suburban household.

According to additional IRI data provided by the International Dairy Foods Association, sales of Feta were up 11.2 percent in 2004 compared to 2003. Sales in 2004 hit 13.7 million pounds and $111.9 million. Using this data, the average price per pound for Feta is $8.17. The IRI numbers, however, account only for scannable items sold in grocery stores, drug stores and mass merchants excluding Wal-Mart, so total sales likely are much higher.

• Cashing in on the market

With continued growth of an already large market, many cheesemakers are hoping to cash in on Feta. Hamdi Ulukaya, a third generation cheesemaker from Turkey, monitored the American Feta market for several years. Seeing sustained growth, he moved to the United States in 2002 and founded Euphrates Inc., which produces only Feta cheese.

His 40,000-square-foot factory in Johnstown, N.Y., produces 6 to 7 million pounds of Feta per year, roughly 25 percent of its total capacity. Ulukaya says there is plenty of room in the market for his company to expand and to reach its full production capacity.

“The trend of Feta has been going up for the last six or seven years along with the trend of Mediterranean foods,” Ulukaya says. “But it’s not only the ethnic market. When Feta is crumbled and flavors are added it has sold well at the supermarket level.”

Ulukaya says that moving into Feta production is not as simple as converting a Cheddar plant to a Feta plant.

“You must have the right equipment, and you have to have the right knowledge,” says Ulukaya.

Buholzer of Klondike Cheese agrees, saying Feta production is a daily challenge.

“It takes a tremendous amount of attention to all aspects of the cheesemaking process to ensure that you’ve got the same product day after day,” he says.

Buholzer says the biggest challenge is the final pH level of the cheese, which he calls “critical.” The pH is controlled by the starter culture and living organisms constantly are in flux, he notes.

• GI protection of Feta

Concerns about production consistency are overshadowed, though, by a larger worry for U.S. Feta producers. There is a chance they will lose the right to use the Feta name.

Because of its long tradition with Feta cheese, Greece petitioned the European Union (EU) for geographical indication (GI) of Feta, which the EU granted in 2002. (For more on GI protection, see “EU court considers protection of Feta” in the Feb. 25, 2005, issue of CMN.)

The ruling, which currently is being contested by Denmark and Germany in the European Court of Justice, says that only cheese produced in Greece may bear the Feta name. The EU ruling has no direct effect on U.S. producers of Feta, but may influence a similar petition before the World Trade Organization (WTO). If Feta receives GI protection at the WTO level, U.S. producers of Feta would be banned from using the name Feta, even in the United States.

Producers here are not panicked by the proposal, but they are concerned about the potential impact GI protection of Feta would have on sales.

“It’s only been in the last few years that consumers are starting to know about Feta,” says Buholzer. “If we all of a sudden change what we’re calling it, I have to think it would be a big stumbling block. It wouldn’t halt growth, but it would cost a tremendous amount of money on advertising and education.”

The Danish and German governments argue that the Feta name is generic, that many countries have produced the cheese for hundreds of years and, therefore, it is not strictly a Greek cheese.In addition to Feta, there are more than a dozen other cheeses being considered for GI protection in the WTO.

“It’s not only Feta, there are several cheeses they are trying to do this with. They have been in the public domain for centuries. I really have to question where they’re coming from on this,” says Buholzer.

CMN

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