SYRACUSE, N.Y. — To help build trust in dairy with consumers, American Dairy Association North East dairy farmers promoted whole milk as the best option for great tasting coffee and lattes and for creating latte art on National Coffee Day.
Why, you ask? Because more than half of all Americans drink coffee everyday – with more and more consumers choosing lattes that usually consist of one-third espresso and two-thirds milk with a creamy foam on top.
“Consumers are on board with the coffee, latte and whole milk trends which is good news for dairy farmers because it translates to more milk sold,” said ADA North East CEO Rick Naczi. “We created five entertaining media segments about latte art to bring even more attention to dairy’s place in consumers’ everyday lives.”
ADA North East partnered with five television stations in key media markets – Baltimore, Buffalo, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Syracuse – to highlight latte art on National Coffee Day. Each news clip featured national latte artist Michael Breach who created uncanny portraits of the news anchors from each station in the rich cream of the lattes.
To take advantage of the growing consumer coffee drinking trends, national dairy checkoff Dairy Management Inc. worked with long-term power partner, McDonald’s, to expand its McCafe coffee options in 2017. DMI’s on-site dairy scientists were involved in developing the new specialty coffee formulations – 95 percent of which contain dairy – and which use whole milk as the default milk.
Perhaps even more important, partners like McDonald’s are category leaders that capture the attention of their competitors. Their actions are often followed by others, creating a “catalytic effect.” When McDonald’s started offering other specialty drinks like lattes, other food chains followed with no additional investment from dairy checkoff.
Visit AmericanDairy.com/CoffeeDay to learn more about ADA North East’s National Coffee Day campaign and for latte recipes that contain at least 66 percent whole milk.
–American Dairy Association North East
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