What makes Daisy the largest sour cream manufacturer? How did they
get involved in a massive controversy? And how are they revolutionizing milking cows?
Here are some things you should know before buying Daisy’s sour cream again.
Daisy sour cream may seem like a massive corporation,
given its prominent grocery shelf space and omnipresence in television advertising.
However, the company is actually family-owned and operated and has been since its first founding
over 100 years ago. Daisy's story begins with Russian immigrant Morris Sokolsky.
According to Grocery.com, Morris' son Louis lost quite a bit of money in real estate investments.
To help him out, Morris gave his son a horse and buggy that would become Louis' bread and
butter — literally. Louis began delivering fresh milk and dairy throughout his hometown of Chicago,
paving the way for the Daisy Brand company which was previously known
as the National Cheese Company, according to the Chicago Tribune.
According to Daisy, the operation has been kept in the family for five generations since its humble
beginnings in 1917. The company withstood not just the Great Depression, but also a massive fire
in the early 70s, according to Grocery.com. It led Louis' son and successor Burton Sokolsky
to relocate from Chicago to Dallas, where he would officially found Daisy Brand, according
to Texas Jewish Post. Since assuming the role of president, David Sokolsky, Burton's son, has
opted to focus on new technologies to improve the product for sour cream lovers across the country.
Daisy Brand is the nation's largest sour cream manufacturer, and currently ranks
41 on Dairy Foods Magazine's list of the top 100 dairy processors in North America.
Its ever-increasing success has led the company to open new plants in Ohio,
Arizona, and other states, in order to better serve local markets.
According to Dairy Foods Magazine, the pandemic and subsequent social distancing
and shelter-at-home measures only further contributed to the popularity of cultured dairy,
due in part to the fact that being at home led folks to cook and bake more than they usually
would. In 2021, dollar sales for Daisy Brand reached a whopping $800.8 million.
That was more than twice that of the second ranking private label, according to Chicago-based
market research firm IRI. This reflected a more than 20% increase, as compared to 2020.
In addition to a rise in at-home baking, the ever-increasing popularity of the keto diet
is certainly one contributing factor to Daisy's prominence. The keto diet is a popular low-carb,
high-fat diet which offers a variety of health benefits including weight loss and reduced risk of
developing major diseases like diabetes or cancer. The idea behind the ketogenic diet is to push your
body into a phase of ketosis, which leads you to metabolize fat rather than carbs for energy.
Healthline notes that sour cream is indeed keto-friendly — particularly the full-fat
standard preparation, which has no added sugar or starch, seeing as it's thickened entirely with
fat and acid. That being said, Daisy sour cream is the ideal addition to keto-friendly recipes.
Given its family-run, family-focused image — not to mention its 2008 American Business
Ethics award — it may be surprising to learn that not everything is all
sunshine and rainbows at Daisy Brand. Specifically,
the company came under fire back in 2015 for alleged animal abuse at one of its farms.
According to CBS News, the allegations came from a former employee of Daisy Brand's Paris,
Texas-based farms. The former employee sent what is described as a "disturbing video" to PETA.
The associate director of evidence analysis in PETA's cruelty investigations department
told the outlet the video depicted, quote, "cows and calves who were sick with pneumonia
and struggling to breathe." PETA has since published those photos and other harrowing
images on its website. Trigger warning: it's pretty gruesome – so view with caution.
Following the allegations, the company investigated and subsequently terminated
the employee who had been mistreating animals in the video and promised to
hire a third party welfare audit firm to explore the other accusations. But PETA,
and the employee who sent the video in the first place, remained skeptical,
maintaining that the abuse in the video was far from an isolated case.
Following the abuse allegations and an investigation from PETA,
Daisy Farms has notably refocused its efforts on new technologies that help
make its practices more humane. This includes using milk supplied by dairy farmer Adam Wolf,
who, last spring, installed 12 state-of-the-art milking robots in one of his barns,
making his dairy one of the state's first to use such advanced technology.
The automated milking, he tells Spectrum Local News, is an ultra hygienic alternative to other
milking possibilities, and it also keeps the animal's needs at the forefront. Indeed, he says,
it actually allows the cows to choose when and how often they want to be milked.
As a result, Wolf tells the outlet,
"My cows in this barn, they're not scared of humans. They don't turn around and run away,
they kind of want to see 'hey, what's going on, come pet me, let me lick you.'"
It's a step in the right direction for the happier cows Daisy Brand hopes to be known for.
Daisy Brand has long relied on marketing to improve its image.
During the Great Depression, it was in large part thanks to creative advertising solutions,
such as the release of mini porcelain butter churns, that the brand managed to stay relevant
and afloat during the devastating economic slump. And the buck didn't stop with churns.
"Do do do do do do a dollop of Daisy. Do do do do do do a dollop of Daisy. Do do do do do…"
The "do a dollop" tagline is integral to Daisy Brand's advertising. According to
the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, it even made the admittedly vague
measurement well-known among American cooks. The tagline and jingle accompanied the brand
when it launched in Californian markets in the late '90s, according to Adweek.
Jason Geis, VP group creative director at Blue Chip,
which has been running Daisy's advertising since 2017, told Little Black Book,
"By using the jingle as a pneumonic, we tap the power in the brand's heritage and bridge the gap
between classic and contemporary food advertising. And by building the stories around classic foods
that go with sour cream, like tacos, we extend the visual heritage of the brand's advertising."
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