1904 Nobel laureate Elie Metchnikoff urges people to eat yogurt to improve gut health.
Early 1900s The Battle Creek Sanitarium, a luxurious health spa in Michigan, prescribes yogurt for a healthy diet and for high colonics.
1919 Danone (Dannon) is founded in Spain by Isaac Curasso.
1926 A dairy shop in Athens, Greece, started by Athanassios Filippou and family, starts selling thick yogurt. The family’s business will eventually become Fage (fah-yay).
1929 Armenians Rose and Sarkis Colombosian open Colombo Yogurt in Massachusetts. Daniel Curasso opens a Danone plant in France.
1941 Daniel Curasso Dannon opens in the Bronx, New York, in a former Greek yogurt plant.
1947 Dannon introduces fruit-at-the bottom, or sundae-style, yogurt.
1951 Yami Yogurt, based in Los Angeles, takes out an ad in Life magazine calling yogurt “nature’s nightcap.” The Joy of Cooking features its first homemade yogurt recipe.
1954 Fage begins distributing yogurt in all of Greece.
1970s Soy yogurts hit the market.
1970 Nancy’s Yogurt, in Oregon, becomes the first yogurt producer to include and advertise probiotics.
1975 Brown Cow, in New York, begins selling the first whole-milk yogurt with cream top.
1977 Dannon launches its famous “Georgians over 100” commercial, linking longevity with yogurt consumption. Yogurt sales increase dramatically.
1982 TCBY, the frozen yogurt chain, goes national. Redwood Hill Farm, in California, introduces the first commercial goat’s milk yogurt.
1983 Fage begins exporting yogurt to the rest of Europe.
1988 Lifeway Kefir is founded by Russian immigrants Michael and Ludmila Smolyansky.
1993 Colombo is sold to General Mills.
1994 Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, in New York, introduces the first commercial sheep’s milk yogurt.
1998 Fage begins exporting Greek yogurt to the United States.
1999 Yoplait introduces Go-Gurt.
2005 Pinkberry, a frozen yogurt chain, opens its first store.
2007 Fage builds a Greek yogurt plant in the United States. Turkish-Kurdish businessman Hamdi Ulukaya launches the Chobani company in South Edmeston, New York.
2009 Daniel Curasso dies at the age of 103.
2010 After 80 years, General Mills, owner of Colombo, drops that product to focus on Yoplait.
2012 Chobani opens one of the world’s largest yogurt-processing plants in Idaho.
2013 Greek yogurt owns 36 percent of the total U.S. national yogurt share.
2017 Annual yogurt sales in the United States are just shy of $9 billion.
2018 Danone USA becomes the world’s largest certified B corporation.
2019 Lifeway Kefir introduces a plant-based probiotic fermented beverage.