In April 2024, several technicians from the statistical service of the US Department of Agriculture raised their eyebrows at the same time: sales of cottage cheese had skyrocketed so enormously that, evidently, it could only be a mistake. So, as protocol dictates in these cases, they picked up the phone and They started calling, one by one, all the producers. It wasn’t a mistake.
Two years later, that same “wave” reaches a factory in Vilalba, in Lugo. There, Entrepinares (the largest cheese manufacturer in Spain) is about to spend more than 20 million euros to also become the Spanish king of cottage cheese. What is happening? How is it possible that in the land of Cabrales, Manchego and Maó that flat, dull and amorphous thing called a cottage is triumphing?
But let’s start with the Mercadona line… because there we find many of the answers. As I say, Entrepinares will allocate more than 20 million to produce, in its Vilalba plant, about seven million kilos of this product. The change for the company is greater than it seems because, despite being the largest cheese factory in Spain, it does not produce fresh cheese.
Spain has never been a place very fond of fresh cheese. It’s not that there isn’t any (from cottage cheese to mata or ‘Burgos cheese’), but the storage conditions complicated its popularity.
Such is the situation that, during all these years, Mercadona has not been able to find a national supplier for its cheese. This has meant that there have been several changes of supplier and that the product is sold out with quite a striking frequency. It wasn’t a big problem as long as the demand was small and controllable; but now the situation has changed.
What happened to cottage cheese? For the confused: we are talking about a grainy, unpressed curd that contains about 12 grams of protein per 100 and just 4% fat. In reality, if we want to fully understand what happened, we have to think of it more than as a cheese… as a “protein supplement” that is made with milk.
That’s why it didn’t have any success: the “cultural gap” didn’t exist until the protein rush created it. And what if he made it: cottage consumption in Spain grew by 61% in 2025seven times more than fresh cheese, according to NIQ.
61%? It sounds like a lot (a lot) and it is, but there is something of a trick to it. After all, the cottage cheese started almost from scratch. Cottage cheese remains almost anecdotal in the Spanish cheese market as a whole. However, the growth pattern is global and even in much more mature markets (such as the US or the United Kingdom) growth is around 20% and the +41.9%.
The question that everyone has is the same: fashion or fixed category? And there the opinions are varied. While analysts such as John Crawford maintain that It’s not something temporary (two years of double-digit growth in value and volume is not a fad) others like Mike McCully are more cautious (and “believe that the boom comes after two decades of decline because of TikTok”, which suggests that it may go away as quickly as it came).
Be that as it may, what is clear is that this story goes beyond cheese. It is about how our food systems are suffering (and will suffer) pressures from extremely volatile ‘states of opinion’. It is, above all, that we are not prepared for it (and being prepared will cost us a lot of money).
Image | Caroline Roose
In Xataka | There is a brand devouring the cheese industry in Spain thanks to Mercadona: Entrepinares
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