French dairy farmers, two co-op brands and one new name.

Yoplait is a French yogurt brand that began as a joint marketing project of dairy cooperatives. English Wikipedia says that in 1964 French farmers agreed to merge six regional dairy cooperatives so that they could sell their products more efficiently on a national scale, and that the Yoplait brand was launched on 25 September 1965.

The name itself is a merger. Wikipedia says Yoplait is a portmanteau of the brands of two of the member cooperatives, Yola and Coplait. French Wikipedia tells the origin from a regional angle: it says the question of which brand to use arose with the creation in 1965 of ORLAC, a regional agricultural dairy cooperative organisation formed at Vienne, in the Isère department, by grouping the cooperatives of Lyon, Grenoble and Saint-Étienne. French Wikipedia says the cooperatives grouped together to sell their milk in common through a body called SODIMA, and it names Jean-Marie Perrin as the founder of Yoplait, with Albert Genin as its president.

The brand grew through products as well as through its owners. French Wikipedia dates the launch of Yop, the drinking yogurt, to 1974, and says the farmers’ grouping that became Sodiaal was formed in 1990, with Yoplait folded into it. In 2002, French Wikipedia says, Sodiaal sold half of the company to the private-equity firm PAI Partners, and in December 2010 the company bought the Quebec yogurt brand Liberté.

Yoplait also grew by licensing its name. French Wikipedia describes a franchise system built on local entrepreneurs, under which partners in different countries make and sell Yoplait products. English Wikipedia lists franchise holders that include Bega in Australia, Tnuva in Israel, Binggrae in South Korea, Sigma Alimentos in Mexico and Fjordland, a brand of Tine, in Norway.

An American licence, General Mills, and a split between Sodiaal and Lactalis.

Yoplait reached North America through licences. English Wikipedia says the Coopérative Agricole de Granby, which later became Agropur, launched the brand in Canada in 1971. In the United States, Wikipedia says, Yoplait was licensed in 1974 by the Michigan Cottage Cheese Company, and in 1977 General Mills acquired the US marketing rights from that company, together with a yogurt plant in Reed City, Michigan. Wikipedia says General Mills opened a plant in Carson, California, to make Yoplait for the West Coast and began selling it on the East Coast in 1981.

General Mills later took a stake in the French parent. English Wikipedia says that on 18 May 2011 General Mills announced it had agreed to buy a controlling 51% interest in the main operating company, Yoplait S.A.S., and half of a related company holding the brand’s intellectual property, with Sodiaal keeping the rest; completion was announced on 1 July 2011.

That arrangement was unwound in 2021. Food Ingredients First reported on 24 March 2021 that General Mills planned to sell its controlling interest in Yoplait to Sodiaal, the French dairy cooperative, and in exchange to acquire Sodiaal’s interest in Yoplait Canada, while gaining royalty-free use of the Yoplait and Liberté brands in the US and Canada. English Wikipedia dates the sale back to Sodiaal to 30 November 2021. Sodiaal has owned the Yoplait brand since 2021.

The North American operations then changed hands separately. Just Food reported on 12 September 2024 that General Mills was selling its US yogurt business to Lactalis and its Canadian yogurt business to Sodiaal; it said the US deal covered the Mountain High brand and brands held under licence, including Yoplait, Go-Gurt and Oui, with staff from plants in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Reed City, Michigan, moving to Lactalis. DairyReporter reported on 5 June 2025 that the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division had cleared the US sale and that the Canadian sale to Sodiaal had been completed in January 2025. English Wikipedia says Lactalis completed its acquisition on 30 June 2025 and placed the brands in an entity called Lactalis Midwest Yogurt. So Sodiaal holds the brand and, since January 2025, the Canadian business, while Lactalis has run Yoplait in the United States under licence since 2025.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are all American yogurt names. Yogurt reaches people through a cup more than through any other object: a small tub of plastic or, less often, glass, kept cold from the dairy to the store and sealed with a foil or film lid under a snap-on cap. Single cups sit side by side in a chilled case, larger tubs sit on the shelf below, and multipacks are held together by a cardboard sleeve or a band, so a brand has to read clearly from a short distance and at a glance.

Because one spoonful of plain yogurt looks much like another, much of a yogurt brand’s identity is carried by the cup itself: its shape, the colour of the lid, the band of type around the side and the picture of fruit or flavour on the foil. The questions worth asking are plain ones: who started it, who owns it now, and where the yogurt is made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what a company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Petals for co-ops, a tapered cup and a French accent abroad.

Yoplait’s mark is a flower, and its petals carry the brand’s origin story. English Wikipedia says the logo is a six-petalled flower designed by Philippe Morlighem, with each petal representing one of the six main founding cooperatives. French Wikipedia gives a fuller lineage: it says the Yoplait logo has always been a small flower, that it was inspired by Dominique Perrin of the École des beaux-arts de Lyon, and that it was later reworked by Morlighem, then creative director at the advertising agency Publicis.

The flower has since lost a petal. English Wikipedia says a redesigned logo, rolled out gradually since the late 2000s, uses a flower with five petals rather than six.

The American cup has its own shape. English Wikipedia describes US Yoplait as sold in a truncated-conical container sealed with an aluminium foil top, and it says the American franchise added a rim to the bottom of the cups so that animals such as skunks would not get their heads caught, together with the printed line “Protect Wildlife: Crush Cup Before Disposal.” Wikipedia says US Yoplait has run an annual “Save Lids to Save Lives” programme, in which pink foil lids mailed back to the company trigger donations to the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation.

The French heritage has also been used directly in packaging and advertising. Wikipedia says General Mills launched Oui by Yoplait on 10 July 2017, adapting the French line Yoplait Saveur d’Autrefois and selling it as French-style yogurt set in individual glass jars. In Australia, where Wikipedia says Yoplait is made locally by Bega Dairy & Drinks, the brand has used the slogan “Yoplait; French for Yoghurt!” Under the Yoplait name General Mills also sold Trix Yogurt and the tube yogurt Go-Gurt in the US, which Wikipedia says were aimed at children.

For a design guide, Yoplait shows how a single flower can hold a brand together across cooperatives, licensees and changes of owner, while each market adds its own cup, jar or slogan. Compare it with Trix, the cereal whose flavours General Mills borrowed for a Yoplait line, and Tnuva, which makes Yoplait in Israel. For this guide we use co-op blue, petal pink, cream and apricot with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Yoplait’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.