Having scored a big hit with its Nature Valley Protein Bars last year, General Mills has gone searching for bigger shares of the better-for-you snack business. And it's enlisting some of its best-known brands, from Fiber One to Green Giant, in the hunt.

The Minneapolis-based CPG giant has done about all it can to overhaul its mainstay ready-to-eat cereal business in a more nutritious manner, including shifting nearly the entire portfolio to whole grains. But that category remains sluggish. Meanwhile, the company's Yoplait brand was caught flat-footed by the Greek-style yogurt craze and is still trying to catch up.

Focusing on its snack brands and on extending other brands into the snacking arena has become crucial for growth for General Mills. Snacks have been its strongest business for the last five years, with average annual sales growth topping 8 percent a year during that time.Continue reading...

Just because Chobani has opened up a huge lead in the Greek-style category it invented — and that is reshaping the U.S. yogurt business — doesn't mean that others can't try to chip away. Dannon has grabbed a significant share after sensing the opportunity with Chobani's rapid rise.

Other players, big and small, also are attempting to make more noise and get their stakes of a Greek-style market that has been calculated at about $1.5 billion a year now and still growing by strong double-digits — even coming up in discussions of Greece's Eurozone crisis. Yoplait, Hain Celestial and the Pinkberry chain are among the brands that are making their own plays. Ben & Jerry's just revamped its frozen yogurt line to make Greek Yogurt the basis of the line. Fage and Chobani have a friend in U.S. senator Chuck Schumer.

The most closely watched Greek yogurt brand is Yoplait. The General Mills line, which has shared the top of the U.S. yogurt market with Dannon for many years, got a particularly late start in the Greek segment. But now it's launching 40 new yogurt products, and Greek yogurt will be the centerpiece of that rollout this summer.Continue reading...