NEW YORK — The past few years have been good for cottage cheese. It was seen on toast topped with avocado, turned into cookie dough, used as a vegetable dip with mustard, and featured along with other social media trends on TikTok.

Continuing the trend is Smearcase’s FroCo, a brand turning cottage cheese into an ice cream-like product formulated with collagen.

Founder Joe Rotondo heard about the cottage cheese trend on social media but “tuned out the noise” to create an “authentic ice cream brand.”

“At the time, I was training for a marathon, and I was in the ice cream aisle looking at every pint of ice cream to see which one had the most protein because that was going to be the one I was going to get,” he said. “(But) the one that had the most protein had such a crappy ingredient list. I walked away disappointed and defeated.”

To satisfy his sweet tooth while training, Rotondo turned cottage cheese into a high-protein snack by adding blueberries and honey.

“I’m on the couch eating (something) that’s not as fun as ice cream (and) then it dawned on me,” he said. “I was like, ‘Why isn’t there a cottage cheese ice cream?’”

Soon after, Rotondo, his sister Gianna, and co-founder Drew DiSpirito ordered an ice cream maker and created FroCo in July 2023. After experimenting with the ice cream machine using different combinations, their third attempt became the company’s formulation.

FroCo’s ingredients include cottage cheese, milk, cane sugar, liquid milk protein, pectin and collagen. Flavors include vanilla, peanut butter and mocha Joe coffee.

“The texture of the product is truly ice cream and is smooth and creamy, and there is a very slight tang from the cottage cheese, more so in the vanilla flavor,” Rotondo said.

He coined the company’s name from the German word Schmierkäse, which translates to “processed cheese” in English.

“The Pennsylvania Dutch used to call cottage cheese smearcase,” he said. “During my research trying to come up with a name, I thought smearcase is an ode to our not-so-secret ingredient cottage cheese. And FroCo is not quite ice cream. It’s cottage cheese. You have frozen yogurt, so I started playing around with it and got FroCo from frozen cottage cheese.”

Smearcase is positioning its better-for-you dessert in the premium consumer packaged goods space by partnering with natural and premium grocers.

Rotondo knew he wanted his brand to be on the shelf as soon as possible, which he accomplished in June 2024 with Happier Grocery in New York as its first outlet. Soon after, Smearcase entered other local New York stores.

The company’s next steps include expanding in the New York metro and tri-state areas. From there, the company plans to expand regionally to New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

“We know that it makes sense for us to grow in retail,” Rotondo said. “They have freezers and the logistics down, so we’re going to put a lot of energy into that. We’re exploring other outlets and having conversations. We’ve explored DTC (direct-to-consumer), and right now it’s a logistical challenge to ship frozen goods.”

To continue growing, the company is raising a seed fund with support from friends and family. The funds will be used to expand, increase store count and fund R&D and marketing efforts.

“It will give us some growth opportunity to get our feet under us before we go to raise institutional capital,” he said. “There’s a desire for frozen novelty — we want to meet that need.”

Smearcase will call the freezer aisle home in the meantime but will offer additional flavors in the future.

“Right now, we’re really trying to build our ice cream portfolio,” he said. “I want to build a product and brand that customers want. People want protein-packed foods. People are looking for different ways to consume cottage cheese. I think this is the way to do it. We’re getting those cottage cheese consumers to the frozen aisle to enjoy the food they love.”