U.S. dairy industry gatherings this fall highlight the Check-off partnerships with Dominos Pizza and McDonald’s that are driving up dairy sales. At the dairy industry’s joint annual meeting this week in Reno, Missouri dairy producer Bill Siebenborn Chair of the United Dairy Industry Association (UDIA), said McDonald’s is selling a lot of smoothies and specialty coffee drinks.
“We think of them as coffee drinks, but in reality a lot of them are really more milk drink with a little bit of coffee in them,” Siebenborn said. “And we’re just very please that we have been able to work with McDonald’s to the extent that we have.”
At the World Dairy Expo, DMI board member and Colorado dairyman Les Hardesty, said pizza cheese sales had been slipping.
“With the economic slowdown the easiest thing for a big pizza chain to do is take a little bit of cheese off because cause that is their number one most expensive ingredient,” Hardesty said.
Hardesty tells Brownfield the Dairy Check-off worked with Dominos Pizza to put more cheese back on their pizzas which has had a positive ripple effect.
“Working with one or two of the key major players in the pizza chain we have driven competition in that whole industry and managed to drive that entire category up,” Hardesty said.
The Dominos partnership has extended to more than a thousand schools with their “Smart Slice” pizza that meets dietary health guidelines. Twenty-five percent of all U.S. cheese is used in pizza, a critical dairy industry sector.
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