Cottage cheese ice cream, anyone? That’s probably not a question you’d expect to be posed at a dinner party – but in the heady days of premium ice cream, health and wellness trends and category-blurring innovation, cottage cheese ice cream has indeed arrived.
In the US, challenger brand Smearcase is disrupting the frozen aisle with something rather fresh – a premium ice cream product with clean ingredients, added functionality (in the form of collagen), and high protein content (40g per pint) derived from its key component – frozen cottage cheese.
It’s an unconventional proposition – and still the only frozen cottage cheese product in the US two years after launch – from a brand that’s singular in more than one way. From its name – Smearcase is a play on schmierkäse, the German word for ‘spreadable cheese’ – to sticking to premium ingredients despite the margin pressures and supply risks early on, it’s a brand that perseveres in a market that can be brutal when new product concepts are trying to land.
But froco – short for ‘frozen cottage cheese’ – is finding its place. Co-founded by Joe Rotondo and Drew Dispirito, Smearcase first landed on shelves in New York City in summer 2024. The brand joined The Real California Milk Excelerator, a start-up accelerator, the same year, and over the next two years won a total of $130,000 from the competition to scale production, marketing and distribution. Funding and recognition have continued to flow: Smearcase won first place in the 2026 Expo West Albertsons Innovation Launchpad pitch competition, bagging close to $200,000. And in May, venture firm Listen Ventures invested in the company to support its scale-up.
“The funding is going to go towards just our strategy of growing in the natural channel,” Rotondo said. “We’re excited to be able to focus on the business and bring our froco to the masses.”
This means distribution expansion: Smearcase has added wider Whole Foods coverage (now fully across the Northeast), launched nationwide in Sprouts, and is rolling out in Fresh Thyme, with Fresh Market coming by the end of May.
The next hurdle: reaching the mass consumer. “We’re in the retailers that we want to be, now it’s just educating more consumers that we exist and educating more consumers as why we’re uniquely positioned to solve this problem for them,” Rotondo said. “Doing our best to build the moat around the brand and setting the standard for what froco is and what it could be is a full challenge for us – because it’s a matter of when, not if, a competitor comes along.”
Still, Smearcase offers something unique while ticking many boxes: premium, high-protein, natural, healthy indulgence. If there was one category it could fit into, it has to be high-protein, right?
“I would argue that we’re a cottage cheese platform,” Rotondo said. “We just so happen to be high-protein. What excites us is this notion of cottage cheese as the platform for real, whole foods, not protein-powder ice cream.”
“The protein ice cream space [is] taking off, but it’s also becoming bubble territory. There are so many brands. Where we come in is that innovation of cottage cheese as an ingredient.”
Joe Rotondo, Smearcase
“What sets us apart is the high integrity and the high standard we place on our ingredient list, and making sure that we’re offering minimally-processed food,” he added. “So if you take protein out of the equation, we still have something that is timeless and is a true differentiated category.”
And that category has growth runway, he suggested, since consumers are looking for new ways to consume cottage cheese. “Brands such as Good Culture made cottage cheese cool again – now, we are adding to that conversation of recognizing and listening to consumers that they don’t want to eat cottage cheese out of the tub. They want to take it, use it as an ingredient, put it in things, have a different form factor. So we’re bringing that novel solution.”
In fact, froco technically escapes the entire ‘ice cream’ definition – “we can’t even call it ice cream because we’re so low-fat,” Rotondo said – but its unique nutritional profile is what makes it stand out.
“We are not using gums, we’re not using stabilizers, we’re using way less sugar than other premium ice cream brands. They’re just high in fat, high in sugar and high in calories, whereas we’re low in fat, low in sugar, low in calories, but high in protein. But on taste, we can compete with them – so we’re not sacrificing taste, and we’re not sacrificing health.”
And so, froco’s appeal is rooted in healthy indulgence, with natural ingredients, protein and added functionality also in the mix. But are there any barriers to acceptance, given the less favourable associations some consumers may have around cottage cheese? “Sure, there’s hesitation,” said Rotondo, “but I think there’s a certain shock factor and viral component of, ‘Oh my gosh, cottage cheese ice cream – I have to try it.’ It gets people talking.
“So we’re trying to make cottage cheese fun - squash the stigma around it. What we hear from consumers is, ‘I can’t believe this is cottage cheese; this tastes just like ice cream.’”
So what’s next for Smearcase? “We have four SKUs – our goal is to get to seven or eight total flavours; take up a whole shelf, and then we’ll explore what that next line of growth will be,” Rotondo said.
