When Fotini Kessissoglou opened Kesso Foods, a pint-size Greek yogurt factory and shop in East Elmhurst, Queens, in 1986, she had no way of knowing that her country’s ultrathick, strained staple would someday become an American obsession.
Today, Greek yogurt rules the supermarket dairy case. It’s also big business in New York State, where Chobani and Fage, two of the country’s leading brands, have their main production plants. But 27 years ago, Ms. Kessissoglou, a new immigrant from Athens, just craved one of her favorite foods from back home. “She simply could not find any good yogurt here,” her daughter, Vea Kessissoglou, said recently.
With three teenage children and few friends in Queens, she poured her energies into the business: adding live cultures to milk and baking it in the oven for several hours, then straining the mixture through cheesecloth overnight, leaving tart, dense yogurt behind. “In Greece, people let it sit on a sunny windowsill instead of in the oven, but you cannot do that here,” Vea Kessissoglou said, referring to this country’s health code regulations.
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