Lifeway Foods Capitalizes on Trends, Reaps Financial Rewards
There is nothing we love more at Naturally Chicago than highlighting the success stories in our region’s natural products industry. Lifeway — the company that essentially created the kefir category when it launched in 1986 — is a story all of its own.
Longtime CEO Julie Smolyansky was a young girl when her family left Ukraine for Chicago to escape Soviet oppression. They brought with them a love for kefir, the fermented milk product popular in their homeland, and started making it in their basement in suburban Skokie.
They incorporated as Lifeway and their delicious products soon outgrew their core ethnic market, gaining shelf space as a complement to the more familiar yogurts. The company’s growth accelerated as more and more consumers became aware of the health benefits of fermented probiotic products such as kefir.
Julie Smolyansky became the youngest woman CEO of a publicly traded company when her father died unexpectedly in 2002. The company’s growth has continued under her stewardship even as the demand for kefir has created competition for Lifeway.
The company has accomplished this impressive growth rate by constantly innovating. Over the years it added a number of fruit flavors to its flagship plain kefir. It introduced single-serving 8-ounce bottles alongside its larger containers. Lifeway created Probugs, a line of kefir products in pouches that are aimed at children, and it makes a probiotic farmers cheese.
Doubling down on its roots, the company also makes several regional variations on the kefir theme, with names such as Ryazhenka.
“I’m thrilled to announce our 20th consecutive quarter of net sales growth, marking an impressive five consecutive years’ worth of quarterly growth for Lifeway on the topline,” commented Smolyansky, who also holds the position of company president. “We continued this record year by delivering our second largest quarter ever with $46.1 million in net sales, up double-digits year-over-year, driven by the continued volume growth of our flagship drinkable Lifeway Kefir.”
She added, “We also saw growth in our cheese category, as our strategic sales investments have capitalized on the increasing consumer interest in soft cheese products, such as our Lifeway Farmer Cheese. Interest in protein-rich foods with probiotics and bioavailable nutrients like Lifeway Kefir and Farmer Cheese is higher than ever, and we believe that, in our 38-year history, our trajectory has never been stronger.”
Other data provided by the company for this article shows:
The company’s revenues have grown by 71 percent over the past five reported total fiscal years
Gross profit has increased 91.6 percent over that same five-year time horizon
Lifeway’s share price has increased by more than 1,000 percent over the past five years
Graph provided by Lifeway
