Veronique Lagrange is Executive Director of the California Dairy Innovation Center, which brings together producers, processors and educators around a common set of innovation and productivity goals. She contributes this column exclusively for Cheese Market News®.
Creating a Pathway to The Needs of Tomorrow’s Consumers
At the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) and the California Dairy Innovation Center (CDIC), with support from Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), we work closely with universities across the state on dairy innovation programs. One element of these programs is a series of challenges and competitions in which students develop new product concepts, create prototypes and pitch their ideas to panels of academic and industry experts.
DMI, other dairy centers and dairy organizations all sponsor similar programs around the country, creating valuable opportunities for students to interact with industry, develop practical skills and consider careers in dairy. These programs bring together students from a wide range of academic, cultural and personal backgrounds, and are supported by faculty, technical and regulatory experts, and industry mentors.
We are consistently impressed by what these young innovators create. Some teams take their concepts further, launching startups, developing brands or entering programs such as our Real California Milk Incubator/Excelerator to explore commercialization. But there is another aspect of these competitions that may be even more revealing for the dairy industry: Students overwhelmingly develop products for themselves and their peers. In other words, they are telling us what they would like to see in the marketplace. That makes these competitions more than educational exercises. They provide a window into emerging consumer expectations— and, potentially, into market opportunities that the industry has not yet fully recognized.
“One of the most valuable things about working with students is that they are not trying to predict the next trend; they are creating products they and their peers would actually want to buy. That gives us an early window into the formats and experiences that could shape the next generation of dairy,” says Jarett Margolis, Director of Business Development, CMAB.
And in California, that window is particularly interesting. California is one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse markets in the United States. Nearly 40% of Californians identify as Hispanic or Latino, while the state is also home to more than 6 million residents of Asian descent. These are not niche consumer segments. They are a substantial and a growing part of the mainstream California marketplace — and, increasingly, of the national marketplace. Yet when we observe what young innovators are creating, the signals do not always align with the trends that dominate many industry conversations today.
More protein. More fiber. Cleaner labels. Less sugar. Fewer ingredients.
Less processing. All of these trends matter. But they are not necessarily the whole story.
What we see from young creators is often a desire for something else: food that is familiar but “reinvented”; products that connect with cultural identity while fitting contemporary lifestyles; and dairy products that deliver not only nutrition, but also bold flavors, unusual
textures, convenience and a real sense of discovery. Consider what happened with cottage
cheese. During the 2022-2023 academic year, a team at Fresno State led by Carmen
Licon, now director of the Dairy Products Technology Center at Cal Poly, developed Cottage Core, a high-protein cottage cheese-based frozen dessert. The product earned second place in the DMI New Product Competition, and the concept was adopted by multiple processors. The timing is remarkable. The student innovation emerged just as cottage cheese was beginning to move beyond its traditional positioning and into a new generation of applications. Soon afterward, social media creators were transforming cottage cheese into ice cream, dips, sauces and other high-protein foods, helping propel the category into one of dairy’s most visible recent growth stories. Again, the “lesson” is not that students predicted the cottage cheese craze. It is that innovation signals can emerge before they become obvious in market data. So, do we need to pay closer attention to where those signals originate? “Innovation signals are not found only in corporate innovation centers, consumer trend reports or traditional category research. They can emerge on university campuses, in culinary communities, among entrepreneurs and wherever consumers are experimenting with dairy in new ways,” says Rohit Kapoor, vice president, product research, at DMI.
And one of the most compelling signals we see is the opportunity to rethink how we approach culturally rooted dairy foods. There is enormous sophistication embedded in the culinary traditions of Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern and other communities. These traditions offer centuries of experience with fermentation, fresh cheeses, cultured dairy, concentrated flavors, complex textures and the pairing of dairy with spices, fruits, grains and other ingredients. The opportunity is not to simply create another version of an existing “ethnic” product. It is to ask what happens when the depth of these culinary traditions meets modern dairy science, product development and consumer insight. What could the next generation of dairy products inspired by Hispanic and Latino culinary traditions look like? What could happen when the flavors and techniques of Mexican, Central American or South American cuisines are combined with contemporary formats, convenience and nutrition? What opportunities exist in cheeses, cultured products, beverages, snacks, frozen desserts and high-protein foods? Truly, the same question can be asked of South and Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern and other rapidly growing consumer
communities. This is not about developing products for consumers from these communities without understanding them. It is about innovating with them — engaging consumers, entrepreneurs, students, chefs and communities as sources of ideas and insight. The opportunity may be considerably larger than a collection of niche products. These consumers are not isolated segments; they are increasingly shaping the mainstream food culture of the U.S. The U.S. Hispanic food segment alone is estimated at $25 billion, growing at 5%-8% yearly. For the dairy industry, this should prompt a broader question: Are we innovating for the consumers we have today or for the consumers who will define tomorrow’s market? If the answer is the latter, processors can capture innovation where it happens. We can engage with universities and emerging entrepreneurs. And perhaps most importantly, we can and should look beyond the familiar categories, formats and consumer profiles that have historically guided dairy innovation. When promising ideas emerge, we need to think just as creatively about the technical, manufacturing and regulatory pathways that can help bring them to scale.
