What Happened to Colombo Yogurt? Mystery of an American Icon

Colombo yogurt was the first U.S. yogurt brand. It got its start in 1929 when Armenian immigrants Rose and Sarkis Colombosian began jarring and selling their family yogurt in Andover, Massachusetts. The yogurt they made in America was the same they had made in the old-country, and based on a traditional Armenian recipe. It was the birth of a dairy dynasty that would eventually dominate New England, only to vanish under the weight of corporate strategy.

Vintage Colombo Yogurt cartons from the 1980s and 1990s. — The colorful cups that defined the American dairy aisle for decades. | Image from General Mills History Tumblr

🥣 Colombo Yogurt: Fast Facts

Founded: 1929 in Andover, Massachusetts by Rose and Sarkis Colombosian.
Claim to Fame: The first yogurt brand produced and sold in the United States.
Major Innovation: Introduced “Fruit on the Bottom” in 1971 to appeal to the American sweet tooth.
What Happened: Acquired by General Mills in 1993 and discontinued in 2010 to favor the Yoplait brand.
2026 Status: The retail cups remain discontinued, but the name survives in select frozen yogurt foodservice locations.

The Colombosians, who had arrived in Chicago in 1917 but then moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, bought a small dairy farm in nearby Andover they called Wild Rose Dairy. The family made yogurt and a drink called ayran from their milk. When they began producing more milk than they could sell or use themselves, they decided to make yogurt that they would also sell along their milk route.

There were no delusions of grandeur here. This was the great depression and the family was simply trying to make ends meet. As Bob Colombosian, one of the sons, recalled, “You made $10 a week and you were doing great.” The family traveled their sales route in horse-drawn wagons with their jars of yogurt labeled “Colombo” because, as Bob claimed, “nobody could pronounce our name.”

🕵️ “Just One More Thing…” If you’re searching for “Columbo” (the detective), you’re in the wrong place. But if you’re looking for the Armenian-American icon that General Mills retired, you’re exactly where you need to be. The spelling might be different, but the mystery of its disappearance is just as deep.

In fact, the Colombosian’s first customers were the local Syrian, Lebanese, Greek, or Armenian immigrants, all of whom came from cultures with a yogurt tradition. It proved a good business, as these local hard-working folks were busy working in mills or other occupations and had no time to make their own yogurt the old way. The Colombosians priced their yogurt low enough so that it was as economical to buy as to make at home.

From local dairy routes, the family began targeting Middle Eastern grocery shops. American-owned grocery stores were not a likely sale since yogurt was still an unknown food to most Americans. They managed to get their yogurt into two stores in Watertown owned by the Mulgars. The Mulgars would later open a Massachusetts supermarket chain called Star Markets, which would also carry Colombo.

After a fire damaged their farm in 1939, they built a large facility in Andover. The popularity of their yogurt spread, and by 1940 they were selling it throughout New England. Even so, it took many years for yogurt to really take off in the US.

Yogurt, which comes from a Turkish word meaning “to thicken,” was a mysterious food only known by Middle Easterners, and most European immigrants had their own familiar soured creams, so they viewed this new food with suspicion.

This was the birth of the “Health Halo” for yogurt. Before the 1960s, most Americans viewed yogurt as “spoiled milk.” It took a concentrated media effort to rebrand it from a strange Middle Eastern staple into a high-protein fountain of youth. Once people believed it could help them “live longer,” the sour taste—which they previously hated—was suddenly accepted as proof of its medicinal power.

Thanks to an October 1960 article in Reader’s Digest, however, which lauded yogurt for its protein content and claimed it was a great way to look younger and live longer, health-food stores got into the yogurt business, selling yogurt soaps, creams, tablets, and cultures for homemade yogurt. This is the way some people found Colombo yogurt early on, and from the health-food stores, Colombo was able to enter the supermarket.

The Innovation of Colombo Yogurt: Fruit on the Bottom

By the time yogurt was becoming widely accepted and integrated into the culture, other yogurts, like Dannon, had joined the race. Regardless, until the mid-’60s, Colombo yogurt was the only game in town. It had spread beyond its glass jar and New England roots by 1960, when it was commonly sold at grocery stores in blue and white paper cups. Only plain Colombo yogurt existed at that time, however, and the sour taste turned most consumers off.

Bob and his brother John, having taken over the company in 1966, began sweetening the yogurt and putting various kinds of fruit in the bottom. They introduced a new line of flavors in 1971. Sales skyrocketed and the company expanded, at long last, into a modern facility. They hit a million dollars in sales the first year after moving to the new plant.

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The Birth of a New Category

Subsequently, by the late 1960s, Colombo and Dannon realized that while Americans wanted the health benefits of yogurt, they fundamentally hated the taste. To the mid-century American palate, tart and tangy weren’t culinary descriptors, they were warnings of spoilage. In essence, when they added sugar and fruit, the Colombosians weren’t just changing a recipe; they were meeting the American palate halfway. It was the moment yogurt moved from the ‘medicine cabinet’ of health food stores to the ‘snack drawer’ of the average kitchen.

Yogurt, which was already a huge health-food fad, became a sugar-coated pill. Instead of just adding pure sweetness, though, the Colombosians were clever enough to add fruit preserves at the bottom. Instead of guessing about how sweet Americans wanted the yogurt to be, they allowed the consumer to control the balance of sour and sweet.

This created the ultimate American marketing miracle: a product that tasted like a sundae but was socially coded as a “health food.” It was the birth of the “snack yogurt” era that eventually led to the sprinkle-topped cups and candy mix-ins we know today.

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The Slow Fade: Why General Mills Starved a Legend

Regardless of this successful innovation, the company did not have the capital to compete in the mass market, so they looked for investors, and sold the business to Bon Grain, a French conglomerate, in 1977. In 1993, the company was sold to General Mills.

In 2010, General Mills stopped producing Colombo yogurt in order to concentrate on its other yogurt brand, Yoplait. The disappearance of Colombo wasn’t a failure of the product; it was a casualty of corporate consolidation. When General Mills bought the brand in 1993, they inherited a pioneer, but they already had a superstar in Yoplait. For seventeen years, they essentially “starved” Colombo, denying it the marketing budget and innovation it needed to survive the Greek yogurt revolution of the 2010s.

In a final twist of corporate irony, General Mills announced in late 2024 that they were selling their entire North American yogurt business (including Yoplait) to French dairy giants for $2.1 billion. It is the ultimate irony of modern food history: General Mills killed the original innovator to clear the path for a brand they didn’t even want to keep in the long run.

Bob Colombosian, then 84, was saddened by the decision, saying that it was the worst thing the company could do, to drop the brand, the oldest in the United States. “It is a big part of my life,” he said. “It is all of it, really.”

Is Colombo Yogurt Still Available?

While the iconic blue-and-white grocery store cups are a thing of the past, the Colombo name hasn’t completely vanished. If you are looking for that specific tart, “cultured” taste, you have to look toward the frozen yogurt market.

General Mills continues to sell Colombo-branded soft-serve mix to independent yogurt shops and high-volume foodservice locations. Because it was the first to market a “hard pack” and soft-serve frozen yogurt in the 1970s, it maintains a small but loyal footprint in the B2B world.

Where to look in 2026:

Airport Terminals: While specific retail locations change, the Colombo legacy persists in the travel and hospitality industry. The brand’s foodservice operations are frequently managed by concession groups like Mission Yogurt, who maintain stands in several major U.S. airports. If you’re looking for that specific tart soft-serve, checking the current vendor maps for major hubs like Denver or San Diego is your best bet for a nostalgic fix.
Independent Soft-Serve Shops: Many “old school” frozen yogurt shops still prefer the Colombo base mix for its signature flavor profile. If you see a shop that doesn’t use the modern “super-sweet” mixes, there is a good chance they are using the Colombo legacy formula.