Cottage cheese: How TikTok trend is fuelling sales of retro dairy product – ‘Demand has gone into overdrive’
A Scottish dairy company is significantly ramping up its cottage cheese production, responding to “all-time record demand” for the once-retro foodstuff largely fuelled by a surprising TikTok trend.
Graham’s Family Dairy has completed a £3.5 million extension at its Glenfield site in Fife.
This investment will increase cottage cheese production by 50 per cent and create 25 local jobs.
The resurgence, shedding its 1970s and 80s image, is driven by a wave of food influencers posting recipes on social media.
On TikTok, “cottage cheese breakfast rounds” garnered 15.1 million views, and “cottage cheese edible cookie dough” 8.7 million.
Supermarket Tesco reports demand for cottage cheese has tripled in the last two years. This trend has seen demand at Graham’s double in recent years, equivalent to an extra two million kilograms sold.
The Grocer also reported last month that monthly volumes of cottage cheese in the UK leapt from about 900,000kg at the start of 2023 to more than 1.7 million kilograms in the final month of 2025.
Graham’s managing director Robert Graham said they first noticed the trend in around May 2023, and that since then the business has “literally gone into overdrive to keep up with the demand”.
“The demand has simply been staggering and our cottage cheese business is now bigger than our milk business – which is what our dairy farm was originally built around,” he said.
“The trend has caught on around the world and as a result we’re now exporting to places as far away as the Gulf States and Hong Kong.”
The investment will support increased output across the company’s full cottage cheese range, including its natural, low fat and high protein lines.
Mr Graham went on: “This investment means we can keep up with that demand without changing what makes our product special.
“We still make our cottage cheese using a traditional open-vat process, which gives it a firmer curd and a more natural texture than some other products on the shelf.
“It has also allowed us to create more jobs locally and start thinking about what comes next for the range, which is really exciting for us as a family business.”
Last month Elizabeth Tomkins, Tesco cottage cheese buyer, said the store was ordering as much cottage cheese as it could get its hands on.
“TikTok food trends often result in sudden sales spikes and we saw that happen last year with Italian bread and cheese but this is a fully fledged culinary phenomenon that has brought a lot of extra business to the UK dairy industry,” she said.
“Cottage cheese became massively popular in the 70s and 80s as a tasty but low-fat filling for baked potatoes or avocados.
“Demand has been steady since then with sales traditionally rising in the summer months and in January because of the popularity of post-Christmas diets.
“But now, because it’s become so popular with a younger audience, we are ordering in as much as we can because we’re seeing all-time record demand.”
