General Mills said it plans to keep its foot on the accelerator in yogurt, a business where the company has slowed its declines but now needs to increase sales.
Executives outlined new yogurt products at its investor day Tuesday that they hope — along with improvements in its snack bars and continued momentum in cereal — will get its largest business unit back to growth.
Jeff Harmening, the Golden Valley-based company's chief executive, told analysts at the New York Stock Exchange that its North America retail unit, which accounts for 59% of all its sales, is a key part of its fiscal 2020 plans.
General Mills aims to grow organic net sales, a measure of growth that excludes one-time benefits like acquisitions, by between 1% and 2% this year and improving yogurt is one of the main levers it needs to pull.
Piggybacking on its successful launch of Oui by Yoplait in 2017, General Mills is adding a crème dessert line to the brand. It's also launching a new yogurt product under the GoodBelly name, a Boulder, Colo.-based company whose brand General Mills licenses through its venture-capital arm, 301 Inc.
It also reformulated its YQ by Yoplait recipe, one year after launching it, and is updating its packaging to call-out the product's health attributes, such as a higher level of protein.
"With YQ," said Jon Nudi, president of North America retail, "we feel like we have something, we were just a bit off."
U.S. yogurt has been one of General Mills' most troubled businesses in recent years after it was late to the Greek yogurt craze, which now composes 45% of all U.S. yogurt sales. General Mills has slowed its own sales bleed, but the entire yogurt category is now experiencing slumping sales following several years of robust growth.
