这家美国食品巨头，如何被一家来自希腊的小公司击溃？

当前正是酸奶产业蓬勃发展的时代。如果你对此有所怀疑的话，可以看看当地超市里的乳品区。首先，酸奶占据的位置很有可能比过去大了许多。你可能会看见各种声称来自希腊、澳大利亚、保加利亚，甚至冰岛的品牌。你不想喝牛奶做的酸奶吗？没问题，还有羊奶或椰汁制作的产品。你可以选择清心寡欲不加糖的希腊酸奶，它的酸度会让你龇牙咧嘴；或是选择可以饮用的液体酸奶；或是把它与肉桂点缀的蛋糕之类配在一起，享受一份甜点。从前那个只有少数酸奶品牌，在盒子底部有一些草莓、蓝莓或树莓的时代，已经一去不复返了。

去年，十大酸奶品牌中有九家的销售额出现了增长。在形势大好，其他品牌纷纷获利的情况下，哪个品牌反而低迷？是优诺酸奶。根据市场研究公司IRI的数据，该品牌去年的销售额同比下降23%，前一年也下滑了7%。优诺的跳水幅度之大，使得他们美国第一酸奶的桂冠也被希腊风格的新贵品牌乔巴尼摘走。【旗下拥有众多产品线的达能集团（Danone）如果把各产品线销售额相加，将会是业内第一。】实际上，优诺的惨败是现象级的，其影响甚至抵消了其他所有酸奶公司销售额的增长总量，导致美国酸奶产业的整体销售额下滑了2%。

对拥有优诺酸奶控股权的通用磨坊（General Mills）而言，较为含蓄的表达是，——这是个让人郁闷的消息。这家位于明尼阿波利斯的包装食品巨头旗下拥有脆谷乐（Cheerios）、Wheaties、Hamburger Helper、品食乐（Pillsbury）、Old El Paso和哈根达斯（Häagen-Dazs）等多个品牌。他们如今不仅需要努力应对消费者对于有包装的加工食品日益消退的欲望，甚至在其他品牌有所增长的领域，他们也表现挣扎。

优诺酸奶给通用磨坊贡献了18%的收入，尤其是再考虑到通用磨坊在汤类领域的弱势和绿巨人（Green Giant）罐头业务的出售，优诺的麻烦足以左右通用磨坊的业绩。该公司的收入已经从2014年的179亿美元下滑到过去12个财报月的157亿美元。相比之下，业绩大体持平的谷物领域都能称得上公司的胜利了。

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 Häagen-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产业的新战略，这个重担落在了杰弗里·哈蒙宁的身上。这位在通用磨坊工作23年的老兵给人以坚忍不拔，广受喜爱的形象，他将在本月成为公司新任的首席执行官。现年50岁的哈蒙宁是公司的法定继承人，正在着手推行有序的转型。他的第一步就是成功收购了Annie’s Homegrown（该品牌以通心粉和奶酪闻名），推动了绿巨人罐头业务的出售。哈蒙宁被人们看作是有机和新鲜食品的支持者，他显然很了解通用磨坊面对的许多挑战。

不过解决它们就是另一个问题了。公司承认当乔巴尼在希腊酸奶上率先出击时，他们延误了战机。通用磨坊全球乳品创新部门的高级主管乔·莫伊德尔表示：“我们慢了一步，这不是什么秘密。”尽管他们努力追赶，不过迄今为止还没有产生什么效果。公司又一次承诺将推出新产品。然而过去十年的表现很难让人相信他们能在酸奶产业上取得突破。

与此同时，还有不祥的征兆隐隐浮现。巴西的私人股权投资公司3G Capital可能被视作“大食品”的死兆星。3G已经收购了卡夫（Kraft）和亨氏（Heinz），还对联合利华（Unilever）提出了报价，尽管计划最终流产。通用磨坊像一些竞争对手一样，正努力在其他人介入之前先一步成为“3G本身”。他们过去几年裁员10%，提高了几个百分比的利润，甚至采用了零基预算，这是标志性的3G举动。

不过采用3G的战术似乎分散了通用磨坊的注意力，他们没有专心采取需要的措施来增加酸奶的销量。这让公司陷入了一个窘境：尽力避免成为3G的目标，却让他们更容易被3G收购。

在美国，只有三家包装食品公司的收入高于通用磨坊：百事可乐（PepsiCo）、卡夫亨氏（Kraft Heinz）和雀巢（Nestlé）。像那些根深蒂固的大公司一样，通用磨坊也有着漫长而间或辉煌的历史。他们的源头可以追溯到南北战争结束后的那一年，卡德瓦拉德·华斯本在明尼阿波利斯的密西西比河上游买下了一间磨坊。公司最具轰动性的产品是Gold Medal面粉，它如今依旧是同类产品中最为热销的一款。华斯本逝世之后过了几代，到了爵士乐时代，该公司与其他一些公司合并组成了通用磨坊。

在之后几十年里，公司推出了许多美国人如今仍然在吃的产品，包括Wheaties、脆谷乐和Bisquick。他们的外部公关团队塑造了贝蒂·克罗克的虚拟形象。这个形象推出了各种食谱（正好能够促销面粉），还曾在美国最著名女性投票中仅次于埃莉诺·罗斯福位列第二。之后，贝蒂·克罗克还成为了蛋糕粉的品牌名称。

就像许多值得尊敬的巨头一样，通用磨坊也遭遇过尴尬的多元化时期：他们曾经拥有过培乐多（Play-Doh）橡皮泥，创立过橄榄园（Olive Garden）连锁餐厅，甚至还建立了一个航空实验室，建立了第一艘探测“泰坦尼克号”的深海潜水艇。

不过到20世纪90年代中期，通用磨坊拆分了所有这些业务，再次成为了一家专业的食品公司。2000年，公司斥资105亿美元收购品食乐，以减少对缓慢衰退的谷类业务的依赖，进一步在食品行业扎根。后者19世纪70年代在密西西比河华斯本的原厂址上建立了第一座磨坊，时间就在其竞争对手的几年之后。

在酸奶给通用磨坊带来苦恼之前，它曾是公司的盈利点。1977年，公司获得了优诺这家法国品牌的许可，开始销售其酸奶（几十年后，通用磨坊收购了该公司51%的股份）。当时标准的美国酸奶都是原味，只在盒底放有果酱，而优诺与众不同，销售的是两者混合的产品。

通用磨坊在20世纪80年代的一条广告中，对美国人宣传称“优诺，是法语中酸奶的意思”。（实际上Yoplait是个新造的词，来源于之前几年法国乳品合作社Yola和Coplait的合并。）不管怎么样。婴儿潮到来了，这个品牌帮助美国酸奶产业的销售额从每年6亿美元猛涨到几十亿美元。

优诺的营销追随了饮食潮流，尤其是随着节食产品的热销，通用磨坊开始了稳步的品牌扩张。他们开始以女性为目标，一条广告里把奶油风格的酸奶宣传为“没有脂肪，没有愧疚”。在世纪之交，优诺又推出了Go-Gurt，这种酸奶放在可以挤压的软管内，供儿童食用，引发了轰动。到了此时，优诺已经超过了达能，成为了市场龙头。

公司建立了一个确定的模式：酸奶市场似乎每五年或十年就会重新定义一次，而通用磨坊既不去引领潮流，也不会距离潮流足够近到可以追赶它。通用磨坊美国酸奶业务的主管大卫·克拉克表示：“这是一个不断重塑自我的领域。”不过他也补充道：“它的生命周期非常短。”

尽管知道这一点，通用磨坊还是对乔巴尼的到来措手不及。

十年前，希腊风格的酸奶在美国酸奶市场中只占有1%的份额。而哈姆迪·乌鲁卡亚改变了这个情况。他在土耳其的一个牧羊场长大，22岁时移民美国，来到纽约州北部。乌鲁卡亚看到了一条广告，称愿以70万美元出售被关闭的卡夫食品工厂。于是他借了一小笔商业贷款，在2005年买下了它。两年后，第一款乔巴尼的酸奶就在纽约州的商店货架上出现了。

不到十年，这位年轻的移民就让一群跨国巨头为之震动。乔巴尼给美国的酸奶制造和营销方式带来了革命性的变化。希腊酸奶比混合式酸奶更加浓醇、粘稠，看起来像是纯手工制作，处理工艺更少。乔巴尼和他的团队声称，这种酸奶比普通酸奶对健康更有益，它的钙、维生素D和蛋白质含量更高，糖的含量则更低。

乔巴尼出现得正是时候，其时，消费者正好开始反抗让包装食品公司取得巨大成功的法则。顾客开始抵制人工增甜剂和任何看起来像化学配方的添加剂，转而追求那些他们认识的配料。在数十年不计代价地逃离脂肪后，他们开始接受全脂产品。“健康”与“节食”不再是同义词。短短几年内，“节食”和“低脂”就开始让消费者觉得该产品在口味上有所牺牲，或是添加了他们不再想要的成分。

乔巴尼是一家拥有感人背景故事的小型初创公司，而不是跨国大企业，这也成为了加分项。乔巴尼的味道甚至品牌名听起来都显得很新鲜，而且最重要的是，他们很真实。零售商也喜欢这家初创公司，因为希腊酸奶的价格比其他酸奶更高。

突然之间，优诺和其他传承下来的大品牌发现自己陷入了劣势。去年夏天，通用磨坊当时的首席执行官肯·鲍威尔在一次演示中承认：“消费者越来越追求那些符合他们对真正食品定义的产品。具体说来，可能是含有更多蛋白质或纤维或全谷物的食品。”

在谷物领域，通用磨坊更改了配方，接纳了不断变化的饮食习惯。2008年，公司推出了无谷蛋白的Rice Chex，并于2015年将这种类型推广到了脆谷乐和Lucky Charms上。许多产品取消了人造食品香料和色素，这是即将上任的首席执行官哈蒙宁支持的倡议。瑞士信贷（Credit Suisse）的分析师罗伯·莫斯科表示：“脆谷乐这个品牌是很好的例子，表明了通用磨坊即使没有领先一步，也紧跟了消费者思考的节奏。”

这些革新起到了效果。Euromonitor的数据显示，脆谷乐在2016年的销量有所提升。

不过类似的举动没有在酸奶领域引发反响。通用磨坊自2012年起，不再在优诺酸奶里添加高果糖谷物糖浆，2015年又减少了25%用糖量，还在优诺轻怡（Yoplait Light）中用蔗糖素取代了阿斯巴甜。不过等到公司进行改变的时候，乔巴尼和其他品牌已经打入了市场。

达能在应对新公司的崛起上，反应比优诺更快，采用了面面俱到的战略。达能酸奶业务，也就是如今的DanoneWave的主管塞尔吉奥·福斯特表示：“我们在市场上有着最多样化的产品组合。”除了原来的达能品牌和Dannon Light & Fit品牌（避免了可怕的“节食”标签），达能还收购了有机食品品牌Stonyfield，推出了强调所谓健康益生菌的达能碧悠（Activia）。他们还创立了希腊风格的酸奶品牌Oikos。

愤世嫉俗的人可能会说，这只是国际食品巨头给新品牌找了一个看起来希腊风格的名字，通过耍小聪明地贴标签来愚弄消费者。这种说法有几分道理。不过无论如何，Oikos成功了。它本来是Stonyfield商标下的一个品牌，却改头换面成了达能的希腊风格系列产品。达能在合适的时机大力推广了它，让它成为了超级碗（Super Bowl）比赛上唯一的酸奶广告。公司邀请了美剧Full House的明星演员约翰·斯塔莫斯和美国全国橄榄球联盟（NFL）的四分卫凯姆·牛顿来拍摄广告。

2010年初，优诺试图用自己的新产品Yoplait Greek作为回应。不过它看起来不像是传统的希腊风格酸奶，也没有朗朗上口的希腊风格名字来证明其可靠性。Yoplait Greek遭遇了失败。

两年后，在酸奶市场蓬勃发展之际，优诺的销售额反而下滑了5%。因此通用磨坊再次出击，推出了Greek 100产品。这款产品较之前者取得了更大的成功：第一年的销售额超过1.4亿美元，是优诺历史上最大卖的新品。这个成就值得跳一支佐巴风格的希腊西尔塔基舞（sirtaki）来庆祝，然而其销量很快就开始萎靡。

在2012年对投资者的展示中，通用磨坊的高管贝基·奥格雷迪许诺：“美国的希腊酸奶市场还处在很早期的阶段，我们完全相信随着时间的推移，公司会在这个领域赢得足够的份额。”

两年后，通用磨坊又尝试了不同的策略。他们宣称盲样测试显示，消费者喜欢Yoplait Greek甚于乔巴尼。优诺甚至在纽约的SoHo开设了一个品尝区，离乔巴尼的第一家酸奶咖啡店只有300英尺。你能够想象一家扮演大卫的初创公司以这种方式对扮演歌利亚的巨型企业发起挑战，而不是像这样反过来。

哎，然而他们的做法也没有取得效果。骏力资本（Janus Capital）的顾客资产研究分析师格雷格·库津斯基表示：“他们从来没有搞清楚怎样在市场上推出引人注目的产品。市场上已经有了乔巴尼和达能的优秀产品。他们从来没有突出重围。”

去年9月，通用磨坊又采取了新的举措，这次是参照了达能的战略：他们推出了两款新的酸奶品牌，都是有机酸奶，试图拓宽吸引的顾客群体。Annie’s系列产品面向儿童，而Liberté则面向成人。不过这两个品牌都没有赢得很好的销量。

如今，希腊风格的酸奶占据了美国酸奶总销售额的50%。乔巴尼在这个领域轻而易举拿到了第一，之后是Fage和Oikos。优诺的Greek 100位列第四。乔巴尼认为，美国酸奶的总销售额会在五年内翻番，达到160亿美元。该公司的首席营销官彼得·麦吉尼斯表示：“这个领域还在发展初期。”去年，每三个美国人就有一个会食用希腊酸奶。乔巴尼也会经常遭遇困境，其中还包括一次大规模的产品召回，不过他们仍然有巨大的增长空间。

这种情况适用于整个行业。按照我们所能取得的最近数据，2015年，美国人均酸奶消费量是14.7磅。这比起1995年的6.1磅是巨大的提升，不过比起法国和西班牙的平均70磅，仍然有很大差距。

可饮用酸奶是当今最火热的新领域，而优诺在这方面尤其弱势。美国该领域去年的销售额增长14%，达到7.66亿美元，而用勺舀的固态酸奶则下滑了3.4%。液体酸奶Drink Chobani在去年一炮而红，也是唯一进入IRI年度新品标兵榜的酸奶产品。与此同时，乔巴尼还在Flip产品上取得了成功，它将酸奶与附加的糖类和酥脆的添加物如蜂蜜坚果等结合了起来，你可以把它们加进酸奶。该产品也成为了销售额达到3.5亿美元的生意。

那么通用磨坊的计划是什么？5月初宣布即将上任的首席执行官哈蒙宁对此仍旧保持着沉默。公司拒绝让他接受采访。

毋庸置疑，哈蒙宁将会和他的前任面临同样的盈利压力。分析师认为他的前任至少是导致优诺酸奶萎靡不振的原因之一。通用磨坊正在努力扩大利润，以避免被3G或潜在的激进投资者收购，因此他们对于折扣限制得很严。此举在利润上取得了想要的效果，不过也只会让酸奶的销售变得更加困难。

通用磨坊也在继续推出新的酸奶产品，例如Yoplait Greek Whips和希腊风格的酸奶小食杯Yoplait Dippers。不过它们的表现都不够强劲到足以扭转公司低脂产品销售额的下滑。一家零售商表示，优诺的新产品“不温不火”。

与此同时，公司还试图在今年夏天更大规模地推出新品。在收益电话会议上，他们放出了这个消息，不过拒绝透露细节。在哈蒙宁被提名为首席执行官之前的几个月，他在一个行业会议上说道：“我们看到，消费者的爱好开始从希腊风格的酸奶向更简单、味道更好，给人感觉更精致、更手工的酸奶转移。我们把这个新的领域称为‘单纯更好’。今年夏天，我们将在该领域推出创新的产品线，利用我们的法国传承和全球技术，给美国市场带来全新的酸奶口味与质感。”

哈蒙宁的评论清楚地表明，他有能力传达听起来很正面的领导宣言。他列出了如今食品产业的几乎每一个热词，但我们却几乎不可能弄清他描述的产品究竟是什么样。理论上说，这可能是改变格局的产品。不过它听起来也像是一堆“大食品”科学家、专家和高管坐在一间房子里，高谈阔论地试图设想下一个大事件。

另一个选择可能是进行并购。可惜的是，通用磨坊可能已经错过了一份具有吸引力的资产，据说它已经被另一家公司收购。为了让与Silk豆奶和其他产品的制造商WhiteWave的并购得到反垄断机构的许可，达能在3月同意出售有机酸奶品牌Stonyfield。Stonyfield年销售额大约为3.34亿美元，可以减少优诺酸奶的负担，帮助通用磨坊在快速发展的有机酸奶领域展开更加积极的攻势。通用磨坊据说对此感兴趣，不过《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal）5月17日报道称，墨西哥的GrupoLala成为了领先的投标者，双方的谈话有了深入的进展。

通用磨坊需要行动起来。他们的股价在去年下跌了9%，这还是在标普500指数整体攀升15%的情况下。显然，低股价是可能导致公司被收购的因素之一。

这让哈蒙宁和他的团队陷入了困境：公司是否需要专注于削减成本、提高利润等手段，从而阻止3G的收购？还是说他们应该投资希腊风格的酸奶进行反击，同时考虑降价，从而赢得市场份额？等到通用磨坊想清楚这些问题，或是哈蒙宁承认问题的时候，市场很可能已经开始了新一轮的酸奶热潮。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

本文登载于《财富》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.