當前正是酸奶產業蓬勃發展的時代。如果你對此有所懷疑的話，可以看看當地超市里的乳品區。首先，酸奶占據的位置很有可能比過去大了許多。你可能會看見各種聲稱來自希臘、澳大利亞、保加利亞，甚至冰島的品牌。你不想喝牛奶做的酸奶嗎？沒問題，還有羊奶或椰汁制作的產品。你可以選擇清心寡欲不加糖的希臘酸奶，它的酸度會讓你齜牙咧嘴；或是選擇可以飲用的液體酸奶；或是把它與肉桂點綴的蛋糕之類配在一起，享受一份甜點。從前那個只有少數酸奶品牌，在盒子底部有一些草莓、藍莓或樹莓的時代，已經一去不復返了。

去年，十大酸奶品牌中有九家的銷售額出現了增長。在形勢大好，其他品牌紛紛獲利的情況下，哪個品牌反而低迷？是優諾酸奶。根據市場研究公司IRI的數據，該品牌去年的銷售額同比下降23%，前一年也下滑了7%。優諾的跳水幅度之大，使得他們美國第一酸奶的桂冠也被希臘風格的新貴品牌喬巴尼摘走?！酒煜聯碛斜姸喈a品線的達能集團（Danone）如果把各產品線銷售額相加，將會是業內第一?！繉嶋H上，優諾的慘敗是現象級的，其影響甚至抵消了其他所有酸奶公司銷售額的增長總量，導致美國酸奶產業的整體銷售額下滑了2%。

對擁有優諾酸奶控股權的通用磨坊（General Mills）而言，較為含蓄的表達是，——這是個讓人郁悶的消息。這家位于明尼阿波利斯的包裝食品巨頭旗下擁有脆谷樂（Cheerios）、Wheaties、Hamburger Helper、品食樂（Pillsbury）、Old El Paso和哈根達斯（H?agen-Dazs）等多個品牌。他們如今不僅需要努力應對消費者對于有包裝的加工食品日益消退的欲望，甚至在其他品牌有所增長的領域，他們也表現掙扎。

優諾酸奶給通用磨坊貢獻了18%的收入，尤其是再考慮到通用磨坊在湯類領域的弱勢和綠巨人（Green Giant）罐頭業務的出售，優諾的麻煩足以左右通用磨坊的業績。該公司的收入已經從2014年的179億美元下滑到過去12個財報月的157億美元。相比之下，業績大體持平的谷物領域都能稱得上公司的勝利了。

These are boom times in the yogurt business. If you have any doubt, check out the dairy section of your local supermarket. For starters, chances are yogurts occupy a much bigger portion of it than they used to. You’re likely to see an abundance of brands claiming heritage from Greece, from Australia, from Bulgaria—even from Iceland. You prefer yours without cow’s milk? No problem. There are offerings based on sheep’s milk or the juice of a coconut. You can choose an ascetic unsweetened Greek yogurt that makes you grimace at its sourness, opt for a drinkable style—or pick a dessert-like option that lets you mix in “?cinnamon-glazed cake pieces,” to cite one example. The days when there were only a handful of brands, each with strawberry, blueberry, or raspberry preserves at the bottom, are far behind us.

Last year, nine of the top 10 yogurt brands enjoyed rising sales. Which one managed to sink even as a rising tide lifted all the other boats? Yoplait. Its sales have plunged 23% over the past year, according to market researcher IRI, after a 7% drop the prior year. Yoplait has fallen so much that its crown as the top U.S. yogurt brand was snatched by upstart Greek-style brand Chobani. (Danone, which owns a stable of varied brands, ranks No. 1 when their sales are combined.) Indeed, Yoplait’s shipwreck was so epic that its effect overwhelmed the combined sales increases for all other yogurt companies last year and caused the category in the U.S. to decline by 2%.

This is distressing news, to put it mildly, for General Mills(gis, +0.85%), which owns a controlling stake in Yoplait. It’s not enough that the Minneapolis-based packaged foods giant—whose brands include everything from Cheerios and Wheaties to Hamburger Helper, from Pillsbury to Old El Paso and H?agen-Dazs—has to contend with consumers’ declining appetite for premade items that come in a wrapper or a box. It’s struggling even in the category where others are growing.

At 18% of company revenues, Yoplait is big enough?—particularly, when combined with weakness in the soups business at General Mills and the sale of its Green Giant unit—for its troubles to affect General Mills’ results. Revenue for the company has tumbled from $17.9 billion in 2014 to $15.7 billion over the past 12 reported months. The fact that the company’s cereal business has been largely flat qualifies as a victory by comparison.

找出酸奶以及其他更多產業的新戰略，這個重擔落在了杰弗里·哈蒙寧的身上。這位在通用磨坊工作23年的老兵給人以堅忍不拔，廣受喜愛的形象，他將在本月成為公司新任的首席執行官?，F年50歲的哈蒙寧是公司的法定繼承人，正在著手推行有序的轉型。他的第一步就是成功收購了Annie’s Homegrown（該品牌以通心粉和奶酪聞名），推動了綠巨人罐頭業務的出售。哈蒙寧被人們看作是有機和新鮮食品的支持者，他顯然很了解通用磨坊面對的許多挑戰。

不過解決它們就是另一個問題了。公司承認當喬巴尼在希臘酸奶上率先出擊時，他們延誤了戰機。通用磨坊全球乳品創新部門的高級主管喬·莫伊德爾表示：“我們慢了一步，這不是什么秘密?！北M管他們努力追趕，不過迄今為止還沒有產生什么效果。公司又一次承諾將推出新產品。然而過去十年的表現很難讓人相信他們能在酸奶產業上取得突破。

與此同時，還有不祥的征兆隱隱浮現。巴西的私人股權投資公司3G Capital可能被視作“大食品”的死兆星。3G已經收購了卡夫（Kraft）和亨氏（Heinz），還對聯合利華（Unilever）提出了報價，盡管計劃最終流產。通用磨坊像一些競爭對手一樣，正努力在其他人介入之前先一步成為“3G本身”。他們過去幾年裁員10%，提高了幾個百分比的利潤，甚至采用了零基預算，這是標志性的3G舉動。

不過采用3G的戰術似乎分散了通用磨坊的注意力，他們沒有專心采取需要的措施來增加酸奶的銷量。這讓公司陷入了一個窘境：盡力避免成為3G的目標，卻讓他們更容易被3G收購。

在美國，只有三家包裝食品公司的收入高于通用磨坊：百事可樂（PepsiCo）、卡夫亨氏（Kraft Heinz）和雀巢（Nestlé）。像那些根深蒂固的大公司一樣，通用磨坊也有著漫長而間或輝煌的歷史。他們的源頭可以追溯到南北戰爭結束后的那一年，卡德瓦拉德·華斯本在明尼阿波利斯的密西西比河上游買下了一間磨坊。公司最具轟動性的產品是Gold Medal面粉，它如今依舊是同類產品中最為熱銷的一款。華斯本逝世之后過了幾代，到了爵士樂時代，該公司與其他一些公司合并組成了通用磨坊。

在之后幾十年里，公司推出了許多美國人如今仍然在吃的產品，包括Wheaties、脆谷樂和Bisquick。他們的外部公關團隊塑造了貝蒂·克羅克的虛擬形象。這個形象推出了各種食譜（正好能夠促銷面粉），還曾在美國最著名女性投票中僅次于埃莉諾·羅斯福位列第二。之后，貝蒂·克羅克還成為了蛋糕粉的品牌名稱。

就像許多值得尊敬的巨頭一樣，通用磨坊也遭遇過尷尬的多元化時期：他們曾經擁有過培樂多（Play-Doh）橡皮泥，創立過橄欖園（Olive Garden）連鎖餐廳，甚至還建立了一個航空實驗室，建立了第一艘探測“泰坦尼克號”的深海潛水艇。

不過到20世紀90年代中期，通用磨坊拆分了所有這些業務，再次成為了一家專業的食品公司。2000年，公司斥資105億美元收購品食樂，以減少對緩慢衰退的谷類業務的依賴，進一步在食品行業扎根。后者19世紀70年代在密西西比河華斯本的原廠址上建立了第一座磨坊，時間就在其競爭對手的幾年之后。

在酸奶給通用磨坊帶來苦惱之前，它曾是公司的盈利點。1977年，公司獲得了優諾這家法國品牌的許可，開始銷售其酸奶（幾十年后，通用磨坊收購了該公司51%的股份）。當時標準的美國酸奶都是原味，只在盒底放有果醬，而優諾與眾不同，銷售的是兩者混合的產品。

通用磨坊在20世紀80年代的一條廣告中，對美國人宣傳稱“優諾，是法語中酸奶的意思”。（實際上Yoplait是個新造的詞，來源于之前幾年法國乳品合作社Yola和Coplait的合并。）不管怎么樣。嬰兒潮到來了，這個品牌幫助美國酸奶產業的銷售額從每年6億美元猛漲到幾十億美元。

優諾的營銷追隨了飲食潮流，尤其是隨著節食產品的熱銷，通用磨坊開始了穩步的品牌擴張。他們開始以女性為目標，一條廣告里把奶油風格的酸奶宣傳為“沒有脂肪，沒有愧疚”。在世紀之交，優諾又推出了Go-Gurt，這種酸奶放在可以擠壓的軟管內，供兒童食用，引發了轟動。到了此時，優諾已經超過了達能，成為了市場龍頭。

公司建立了一個確定的模式：酸奶市場似乎每五年或十年就會重新定義一次，而通用磨坊既不去引領潮流，也不會距離潮流足夠近到可以追趕它。通用磨坊美國酸奶業務的主管大衛·克拉克表示：“這是一個不斷重塑自我的領域?！辈贿^他也補充道：“它的生命周期非常短?！?/p>

盡管知道這一點，通用磨坊還是對喬巴尼的到來措手不及。

十年前，希臘風格的酸奶在美國酸奶市場中只占有1%的份額。而哈姆迪·烏魯卡亞改變了這個情況。他在土耳其的一個牧羊場長大，22歲時移民美國，來到紐約州北部。烏魯卡亞看到了一條廣告，稱愿以70萬美元出售被關閉的卡夫食品工廠。于是他借了一小筆商業貸款，在2005年買下了它。兩年后，第一款喬巴尼的酸奶就在紐約州的商店貨架上出現了。

不到十年，這位年輕的移民就讓一群跨國巨頭為之震動。喬巴尼給美國的酸奶制造和營銷方式帶來了革命性的變化。希臘酸奶比混合式酸奶更加濃醇、粘稠，看起來像是純手工制作，處理工藝更少。喬巴尼和他的團隊聲稱，這種酸奶比普通酸奶對健康更有益，它的鈣、維生素D和蛋白質含量更高，糖的含量則更低。

喬巴尼出現得正是時候，其時，消費者正好開始反抗讓包裝食品公司取得巨大成功的法則。顧客開始抵制人工增甜劑和任何看起來像化學配方的添加劑，轉而追求那些他們認識的配料。在數十年不計代價地逃離脂肪后，他們開始接受全脂產品。“健康”與“節食”不再是同義詞。短短幾年內，“節食”和“低脂”就開始讓消費者覺得該產品在口味上有所犧牲，或是添加了他們不再想要的成分。

喬巴尼是一家擁有感人背景故事的小型初創公司，而不是跨國大企業，這也成為了加分項。喬巴尼的味道甚至品牌名聽起來都顯得很新鮮，而且最重要的是，他們很真實。零售商也喜歡這家初創公司，因為希臘酸奶的價格比其他酸奶更高。

突然之間，優諾和其他傳承下來的大品牌發現自己陷入了劣勢。去年夏天，通用磨坊當時的首席執行官肯·鮑威爾在一次演示中承認：“消費者越來越追求那些符合他們對真正食品定義的產品。具體說來，可能是含有更多蛋白質或纖維或全谷物的食品。”

在谷物領域，通用磨坊更改了配方，接納了不斷變化的飲食習慣。2008年，公司推出了無谷蛋白的Rice Chex，并于2015年將這種類型推廣到了脆谷樂和Lucky Charms上。許多產品取消了人造食品香料和色素，這是即將上任的首席執行官哈蒙寧支持的倡議。瑞士信貸（Credit Suisse）的分析師羅伯·莫斯科表示：“脆谷樂這個品牌是很好的例子，表明了通用磨坊即使沒有領先一步，也緊跟了消費者思考的節奏。”

這些革新起到了效果。Euromonitor的數據顯示，脆谷樂在2016年的銷量有所提升。

不過類似的舉動沒有在酸奶領域引發反響。通用磨坊自2012年起，不再在優諾酸奶里添加高果糖谷物糖漿，2015年又減少了25%用糖量，還在優諾輕怡（Yoplait Light）中用蔗糖素取代了阿斯巴甜。不過等到公司進行改變的時候，喬巴尼和其他品牌已經打入了市場。

達能在應對新公司的崛起上，反應比優諾更快，采用了面面俱到的戰略。達能酸奶業務，也就是如今的DanoneWave的主管塞爾吉奧·福斯特表示：“我們在市場上有著最多樣化的產品組合?！背嗽瓉淼倪_能品牌和Dannon Light & Fit品牌（避免了可怕的“節食”標簽），達能還收購了有機食品品牌Stonyfield，推出了強調所謂健康益生菌的達能碧悠（Activia）。他們還創立了希臘風格的酸奶品牌Oikos。

憤世嫉俗的人可能會說，這只是國際食品巨頭給新品牌找了一個看起來希臘風格的名字，通過耍小聰明地貼標簽來愚弄消費者。這種說法有幾分道理。不過無論如何，Oikos成功了。它本來是Stonyfield商標下的一個品牌，卻改頭換面成了達能的希臘風格系列產品。達能在合適的時機大力推廣了它，讓它成為了超級碗（Super Bowl）比賽上唯一的酸奶廣告。公司邀請了美劇Full House的明星演員約翰·斯塔莫斯和美國全國橄欖球聯盟（NFL）的四分衛凱姆·牛頓來拍攝廣告。

2010年初，優諾試圖用自己的新產品Yoplait Greek作為回應。不過它看起來不像是傳統的希臘風格酸奶，也沒有朗朗上口的希臘風格名字來證明其可靠性。Yoplait Greek遭遇了失敗。

兩年后，在酸奶市場蓬勃發展之際，優諾的銷售額反而下滑了5%。因此通用磨坊再次出擊，推出了Greek 100產品。這款產品較之前者取得了更大的成功：第一年的銷售額超過1.4億美元，是優諾歷史上最大賣的新品。這個成就值得跳一支佐巴風格的希臘西爾塔基舞（sirtaki）來慶祝，然而其銷量很快就開始萎靡。

在2012年對投資者的展示中，通用磨坊的高管貝基·奧格雷迪許諾：“美國的希臘酸奶市場還處在很早期的階段，我們完全相信隨著時間的推移，公司會在這個領域贏得足夠的份額。”

兩年后，通用磨坊又嘗試了不同的策略。他們宣稱盲樣測試顯示，消費者喜歡Yoplait Greek甚于喬巴尼。優諾甚至在紐約的SoHo開設了一個品嘗區，離喬巴尼的第一家酸奶咖啡店只有300英尺。你能夠想象一家扮演大衛的初創公司以這種方式對扮演歌利亞的巨型企業發起挑戰，而不是像這樣反過來。

哎，然而他們的做法也沒有取得效果。駿力資本（Janus Capital）的顧客資產研究分析師格雷格·庫津斯基表示：“他們從來沒有搞清楚怎樣在市場上推出引人注目的產品。市場上已經有了喬巴尼和達能的優秀產品。他們從來沒有突出重圍。”

去年9月，通用磨坊又采取了新的舉措，這次是參照了達能的戰略：他們推出了兩款新的酸奶品牌，都是有機酸奶，試圖拓寬吸引的顧客群體。Annie’s系列產品面向兒童，而Liberté則面向成人。不過這兩個品牌都沒有贏得很好的銷量。

如今，希臘風格的酸奶占據了美國酸奶總銷售額的50%。喬巴尼在這個領域輕而易舉拿到了第一，之后是Fage和Oikos。優諾的Greek 100位列第四。喬巴尼認為，美國酸奶的總銷售額會在五年內翻番，達到160億美元。該公司的首席營銷官彼得·麥吉尼斯表示：“這個領域還在發展初期。”去年，每三個美國人就有一個會食用希臘酸奶。喬巴尼也會經常遭遇困境，其中還包括一次大規模的產品召回，不過他們仍然有巨大的增長空間。

這種情況適用于整個行業。按照我們所能取得的最近數據，2015年，美國人均酸奶消費量是14.7磅。這比起1995年的6.1磅是巨大的提升，不過比起法國和西班牙的平均70磅，仍然有很大差距。

可飲用酸奶是當今最火熱的新領域，而優諾在這方面尤其弱勢。美國該領域去年的銷售額增長14%，達到7.66億美元，而用勺舀的固態酸奶則下滑了3.4%。液體酸奶Drink Chobani在去年一炮而紅，也是唯一進入IRI年度新品標兵榜的酸奶產品。與此同時，喬巴尼還在Flip產品上取得了成功，它將酸奶與附加的糖類和酥脆的添加物如蜂蜜堅果等結合了起來，你可以把它們加進酸奶。該產品也成為了銷售額達到3.5億美元的生意。

那么通用磨坊的計劃是什么？5月初宣布即將上任的首席執行官哈蒙寧對此仍舊保持著沉默。公司拒絕讓他接受采訪。

毋庸置疑，哈蒙寧將會和他的前任面臨同樣的盈利壓力。分析師認為他的前任至少是導致優諾酸奶萎靡不振的原因之一。通用磨坊正在努力擴大利潤，以避免被3G或潛在的激進投資者收購，因此他們對于折扣限制得很嚴。此舉在利潤上取得了想要的效果，不過也只會讓酸奶的銷售變得更加困難。

通用磨坊也在繼續推出新的酸奶產品，例如Yoplait Greek Whips和希臘風格的酸奶小食杯Yoplait Dippers。不過它們的表現都不夠強勁到足以扭轉公司低脂產品銷售額的下滑。一家零售商表示，優諾的新產品“不溫不火”。

與此同時，公司還試圖在今年夏天更大規模地推出新品。在收益電話會議上，他們放出了這個消息，不過拒絕透露細節。在哈蒙寧被提名為首席執行官之前的幾個月，他在一個行業會議上說道：“我們看到，消費者的愛好開始從希臘風格的酸奶向更簡單、味道更好，給人感覺更精致、更手工的酸奶轉移。我們把這個新的領域稱為‘單純更好’。今年夏天，我們將在該領域推出創新的產品線，利用我們的法國傳承和全球技術，給美國市場帶來全新的酸奶口味與質感?！?/p>

哈蒙寧的評論清楚地表明，他有能力傳達聽起來很正面的領導宣言。他列出了如今食品產業的幾乎每一個熱詞，但我們卻幾乎不可能弄清他描述的產品究竟是什么樣。理論上說，這可能是改變格局的產品。不過它聽起來也像是一堆“大食品”科學家、專家和高管坐在一間房子里，高談闊論地試圖設想下一個大事件。

另一個選擇可能是進行并購?？上У氖?，通用磨坊可能已經錯過了一份具有吸引力的資產，據說它已經被另一家公司收購。為了讓與Silk豆奶和其他產品的制造商WhiteWave的并購得到反壟斷機構的許可，達能在3月同意出售有機酸奶品牌Stonyfield。Stonyfield年銷售額大約為3.34億美元，可以減少優諾酸奶的負擔，幫助通用磨坊在快速發展的有機酸奶領域展開更加積極的攻勢。通用磨坊據說對此感興趣，不過《華爾街日報》（Wall Street Journal）5月17日報道稱，墨西哥的GrupoLala成為了領先的投標者，雙方的談話有了深入的進展。

通用磨坊需要行動起來。他們的股價在去年下跌了9%，這還是在標普500指數整體攀升15%的情況下。顯然，低股價是可能導致公司被收購的因素之一。

這讓哈蒙寧和他的團隊陷入了困境：公司是否需要專注于削減成本、提高利潤等手段，從而阻止3G的收購？還是說他們應該投資希臘風格的酸奶進行反擊，同時考慮降價，從而贏得市場份額？等到通用磨坊想清楚這些問題，或是哈蒙寧承認問題的時候，市場很可能已經開始了新一輪的酸奶熱潮。（財富中文網）

譯者：嚴匡正

本文登載于《財富》2017年6月1日版。

The job of spooning out a new strategy for yogurt—and much more—falls to Jeff Harmening. A 23-year-veteran of General Mills who manages to be seen as both tenacious and well liked, he is slated to become the company’s new CEO this month. Harmening, 50, who was the company’s heir apparent and is taking over in what appears to be an orderly transition, spearheaded its successful acquisition of the Annie’s Homegrown brand (best known for its macaroni and cheese), pushed for the sale of Green Giant, and is viewed as an advocate for organic and fresher food. He’s clearly aware of the many challenges facing General Mills.

Solving them is a different matter. The company acknowledges it tarried when Chobani established a beachhead for Greek-style yogurt. “It’s no secret we were late,” says Joe Moidl, senior director of innovation for global dairy at General Mills. It has been trying to catch up, but the moves have been ineffectual so far. General Mills is once again promising action in the form of new products. But the company’s past decade doesn’t offer a lot of reasons to expect a yogurt breakthrough.

Meanwhile, a specter looms. It might be viewed as the Death Star for Big Food: Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital. It has already acquired Kraft and Heinz and made an aborted bid for Unilever. General Mills, like some of its rivals, has been in a race to “3G itself” before somebody else does. The company has laid off 10% of its employees over the past few years and improved its profit margins by several percentage points. It even adopted zero-based budgeting, a signature 3G practice.

But implementing the 3G playbook seemed to distract the company from the steps it needed to take to increase its yogurt sales. That leaves General Mills in a paradoxical position: The very moves it made to fend off the likes of 3G may make it more vulnerable to such an acquisition.

Only three consumer packaged goods companies generate more revenue than General Mills in the U.S.: PepsiCo(pep, +0.89%), Kraft Heinz (khc, +1.00%), and Nestlé. Like those stalwarts, it has a long and intermittently glorious history. General Mills traces its roots to the year after the Civil War ended, when Cadwallader Washburn built a mill on the Upper Mississippi River in Minneapolis. His company’s biggest hit would be Gold Medal flour, which remains the top seller in the category today. A few generations after Washburn’s death, his operation combined with others during the Roaring Twenties to form General Mills.

In the decades that followed, the company introduced numerous staples that Americans still eat today, including Wheaties, Cheerios, and Bisquick. Its outside PR team invented Betty Crocker, a persona who dispensed recipes (which just happened to call for flour) and who once polled behind only Eleanor Roosevelt as the most famous woman in America. It wasn’t until later that Betty Crocker would become a brand of cake mix.

Like more than one venerable titan, General Mills went through an awkward conglomerate phase: It once owned Play-Doh, started the Olive Garden restaurant chain, and even operated an aeronautical lab that produced the first deep-sea submarine to explore the Titanic.

But by the mid-1990s, General Mills had exited those offshoots and become solely a food company again. It committed further to the industry in 2000 when it paid $10.5 billion for Pillsbury—which built its first mill across the Mississippi from the original Washburn operation just a few years after its rival in the 1870s—to rely less on the slowly ebbing cereal business.

Before yogurt became an affliction for General Mills, it was a boon. In 1977 it started selling Yoplait, a French brand, under license. (Decades later, General Mills acquired 51% of the company.) Unlike the typical U.S. yogurts at the time, which were unflavored, with sweet jam at the bottom of the container, Yoplait sold a blended product.

General Mills pitched it to Americans as “?Yoplait—it is French for yogurt,” as one ’80s ad put it. (The name was actually coined when French dairy cooperatives Yola and Coplait merged years earlier.) No matter. Baby boomers gorged, and the brand helped propel yogurt sales from $600 million a year well into the billions.

Yoplait’s marketing followed eating trends, particularly as diet products proliferated, and General Mills unveiled a steady stream of brand extensions. The brand began targeting women, with one ad touting a custard style as “fat-free and guilt-free.” By the turn of the century, Yoplait scored a major hit when it launched Go-Gurt, yogurt in squeezable tubes for kids. By this point, Yoplait had toppled the Dannon brand and become the market leader.

A pattern had established itself: Yogurt seemed to be redefined every five or 10 years, and General Mills was either ahead of the curve or close enough behind it to catch up. “It is a category of constant reinvention of itself,” says David Clark, president of General Mills’ U.S. yogurt business. But, he adds, “it has a very short life cycle.”

Despite that knowledge, General Mills was caught unprepared when Chobani arrived.

A decade ago, Greek-style yogurt made up just 1% of sales in the U.S. HamdiUlukaya changed that. At age 22 he emigrated from Turkey, where he grew up on a sheep farm, to upstate New York. Ulukaya eventually spotted an advertisement for a shuttered Kraft Foods plant that was selling for $700,000 and, in 2005, took out a small-business loan to acquire it. Two years later, the first Chobani yogurt appeared on a store shelf in New York State.

Within less than a decade, the young immigrant would shake up a group of multinational giants. Chobani revolutionized how yogurt is made and marketed in America. Greek yogurt is richer and thicker—it seems more artisanal, less processed—than smooth blended styles. Chobani and its ilk claim more health benefits than regular yogurt: high levels of calcium, vitamin D, and protein—and less sugar.

Chobani came on the scene just as consumers were beginning to revolt against the principles that had made packaged goods companies hugely successful. Shoppers began rejecting artificial sweeteners and anything that looked like a chemical formulation. Instead they craved ingredients they could recognize. After decades of fleeing fat at all costs, they began embracing products with whole fat. “Healthy” was no longer a synonym for “diet.” Within a matter of years “diet” or “light” would evoke a compromise on taste or ingredients that consumers no longer wanted to make.

It only helped that Chobani was a tiny startup with a compelling backstory rather than a multinational corporation. Chobani tasted—and sounded—fresh, and most of all, authentic. Retailers loved the upstart, too, because Greek yogurt commands higher prices than the rest of the industry.

Suddenly Yoplait and other legacy brands found themselves on the defensive. “Consumers are increasingly seeking products that match their personal definition of real food,” General Mills’ then-CEO Ken Powell acknowledged in a presentation last summer. “It can come to life in foods that have more protein or fiber or whole grain.”

In its cereal business, General Mills was able to embrace changing eating patterns with reformulations. In 2008 the company debuted a gluten-free version of Rice Chex and then expanded to Cheerios and Lucky Charms in 2015. Artificial flavors and colors were removed from many products, an initiative backed by Harmening, the incoming CEO. “Cheerios is a brand that is a great example of how General Mills has kept pace, if not ahead, of how the consumer is thinking,” says Credit Suisse analyst Rob Moskow.

Those renovations worked. Sales of Cheerios increased in 2016, Euromonitor data shows.

But similar moves simply didn’t resonate in yogurt. General Mills removed high-fructose corn syrup from Yoplait in 2012, reduced sugar by 25% in 2015, and replaced aspartame with sucralose in Yoplait Light. And by the time it made those changes, Chobani and others had made inroads.

For its part, Danone handled the newbie’s rise by responding faster than Yoplait and by embracing an all-things-to-all-people strategy. “We have the widest portfolio in the market,” says Sergio Fuster, chief of the yogurt business for what is now known as DanoneWave. In addition to its original Dannon brand and Dannon Light & Fit line (which avoided the dreaded “diet” label), Danone bought Stonyfield, an organic brand, and launched Activia, which emphasizes purportedly healthy probiotics. And it created a Greek-style line called Oikos.

A cynic might say that all it takes is a little bit of clever labeling—a global food conglomerate slapping a Greek-looking name on a new brand—to fool consumers. And there’s at least a dollop of truth in that. Either way, Oikos has succeeded. It was a brand previously held under the Stonyfield trademark but repurposed to be the company’s Greek offering. Danone gave it a big push at the right moment, making it the first yogurt to advertise during the Super Bowl. It hired celebrities, including Full Housestar John Stamos and NFL quarterback Cam Newton, to appear in ads.

Yoplait tried to parry with its own new brand, Yoplait Greek, at the beginning of 2010. But it didn’t look much like traditional Greek-style yogurt, and there was no catchy ethnic name to conjure authenticity. Yoplait Greek flopped.

Two years later, with Yoplait’s sales sliding 5% amid a surging yogurt market, General Mills tried again, adding a second entry called Greek 100. This version was a bigger success: First-year sales surpassed $140 million, the biggest launch in ?Yoplait history. That was worth dancing a Zorba-style sirtaki over—until those sales soon began to sag.

“It’s still very early days for the U.S. Greek yogurt segment, and we fully expect to earn our fair share of this segment over time,” vowed General Mills executive Becky O’Grady during the company’s investor day presentation in 2012.

Two years later, General Mills tried a different tack. It began claiming that blind taste tests proved that customers preferred Yoplait Greek to Chobani. Yoplait even opened a pop-up “taste off” space in New York’s SoHo, just 300 feet away from Chobani’s first yogurt café. It was the kind of slingshot you’d imagine an upstart David aiming at a corporate Goliath, rather than vice versa.

Alas, the stone missed its target. “They never figured out how to bring a compelling offer to the market,” says Greg Kuczynski, a consumer equity research analyst at Janus Capital. “You’ve already got strong offerings from Chobani and Dannon. They never broke through the noise.”

Last September, General Mills made yet another move, this one out of the Danone playbook: It launched two new yogurt brands, both organic, in an attempt to broaden its appeal. The Annie’s line is targeted at children; the Liberté brand is aimed at grownups. Neither has registered significant sales.

Today, Greek styles make up 50% of U.S. yogurt sales. Chobani is easily No. 1 in that grouping, followed by Fage and Oikos. Yoplait’s Greek 100 ranks fourth. Chobani thinks overall yogurt sales could double to $16 billion within five years. “This category is in its infancy,” says its CMO, Peter McGuinness. Just one of every three Americans ate a Greek yogurt in the past year. His company, which hasn’t been immune to the occasional stumble, including a significant recall, still has plenty of room for growth.

That point extends to the industry overall. U.S. per capita yogurt consumption was 14.7 pounds in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s a big jump from 6.1 pounds in 1995—but far below the 70-pound average for nations like France and Spain.

Drinkable yogurt—an area in which Yoplait is particularly weak—has been the hottest area of late. It registered a 14% increase, to reach $766 million in sales last year, while spoonable yogurt dribbled down by 3.4%. A liquid product called Drink Chobani became a hit last year, the only new yogurt to make research firm IRI’s annual new-product pacesetters list. Meanwhile, Chobani is also finding success with its Flip products, which combine yogurt with an attached pouch of sugary, crunchy extras like honey-covered nuts that you can “flip” into the yogurt. It has grown to become a $350 million business.

So what’s the plan for General Mills? Harmening, whose promotion to CEO was announced in early May, has been mum so far. The company declined to make him available for an interview.

Needless to say, he’ll face the same profit pressures as his predecessor, at least one of which analysts view as contributing to Yoplait’s yogurt problems. In General Mills’ quest for improved profit margins to placate 3G or a potential activist investor, it has clamped down on discounting. That has had the intended effect of boosting margins, but only made it harder to move its yogurt.

General Mills has continued to launch new yogurt products, like Yoplait Greek Whips and the Greek-style yogurt snack cups Yoplait Dippers. None of these twists have been strong enough to offset the tumbling sales for the company’s light products. One retailer calls Yoplait’s latest products “not a total swing and a miss.”

Meanwhile, the company has been trying to build anticipation for a bigger launch this summer. It touted the news on an earnings call but declined to provide details. Here’s what Harmening had to say about it at an industry conference a few months before he was named CEO: “We’re seeing consumers expanding out from Greek to more simple, better-tasting yogurts that feel more crafted and artisanal. We call this emerging segment ‘simply better,’ and this summer we’re launching an innovative new line in this segment that leverages our French heritage and global expertise to bring an entirely new yogurt taste and texture to the U.S. market.”

Harmening’s comments certainly demonstrate his ability to deploy positive-sounding CEO rhetoric. He ticked off almost every buzzword in the food business today. But it’s well nigh impossible to discern what the product he’s describing will actually be like. In theory, it could be a game changer. But what it largely sounds like is a bunch of Big Food scientists, experts, and executives sitting in a room and trying to conceive the next big thing.

Another option might be to make an acquisition. Alas, General Mills may be missing out on attractive asset, which is reportedly about to be scooped up by another company. To gain antitrust approval of its recently completed deal to merge with WhiteWave, which makes Silk soy milk and other products, Danone agreed in March to sell organic Stonyfield yogurt. With an estimated $334 million in annual sales, Stonyfield could reduce the burden on Yoplait and help General Mills compete more aggressively in the fast-growing organic category. The company was rumored to be interested, but on May 17, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mexico’s GrupoLala had emerged as the lead bidder and that talks were at an advanced stage.

General Mills needs to act. Its shares have slumped by 9% over the past year, even as the S&P 500 chugged up by 15%. A low stock price, of course, is one thing that can make a company vulnerable to a takeover.

That presents Harmening and his team with a quandary: Does the company focus on cutting costs, boosting margins, and otherwise playing defense to keep 3G at bay? Or does it invest in a Greek counteroffensive and consider cutting some prices to win back market share? By the time General Mills figures it all out, as even Harmening obliquely acknowledged, it’s likely the market will have moved on to a new yogurt trend.

A version of this article appears in the June 1, 2017 issue of Fortune.