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Whole Foods Will No Longer Soil Its Shelves With Chobani
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Dec 19, 2013
Modified Dec 19, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Dec 19, 2013
Modified Dec 19, 2013
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Sad news, Chobani fans: everyone's favorite Greek yogurt brand will soon stop being available at everyone's favorite massive organic food retailer. Whole Foods announced yesterday that they'll be dropping Chobani sometime early next year, so you've only got a few months to stock up on Pomegranate and Honey yogurt until you're forced to buy it at one of the million other grocery stores in the city/nation/world.
Whole Foods says they've just got too much yogurt on their shelves, and kicking out Chobani will free up more room "for product choices that aren’t readily available on the market," spokesman Michael Sinatra told us in a statement yesterday. And it's more than just Chobani's ubiquity that has Whole Foods turning its back on the company; the retailer says they "challenged its Greek yogurt suppliers to create unique options for shoppers to enjoy—including exclusive flavors, non-GMO options and organic choices." According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported this broken partnership, Chobani uses milk from cows fed on genetically-modified crops, and the GMO connection has Whole Foods hesitating. They'll be phasing Chobani out come early 2014 (Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, meanwhile, told the Times that there just aren't enough non-GMO sourced crops to feed all the cows needed to produce large quantities of milk.)
Chobani officials, naturally, say they hope Whole Foods rethinks their decision to drop the brand. "Though we have very limited distribution within Whole Foods, they have been an important partner of ours over the years," Ulukaya said in an email. "As the number one Greek Yogurt brand in America using only natural ingredients, we share an affinity with Whole Foods and its shoppers. We know our fans love buying our products in their stores and we hope to continue our partnership moving forward."
Ah, well. Whether or not Whole Foods decides to restock Chobani or not, the yogurt isn't disappearing or anything, and if you don't feel like trekking all the way to the fancy SoHo flagship store you can pick it up, well, anywhere else. Just be sure to watch out for those "swelling tops" of doom.
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