Lifeway Foods: brands it owns and its ownership tree
Lifeway Foods (NASDAQ: LWAY) is a publicly listed company headquartered in Morton Grove, Illinois, United States that owns 3 consumer brands.[1]
Lifeway Foods is the largest producer and marketer of kefir in the United States. Michael Smolyansky founded it in 1986, ten years after his family emigrated from Eastern Europe, and it was the first company to sell kefir to American consumers on a commercial scale, starting in the Chicago area. Drinkable kefir made up about 85 per cent of its $212.5 million of net sales in 2025. It also sells farmer cheese, drinkable yogurt, butter and sour cream. Danone once owned about 23 per cent of the company but sold all of its shares in May 2026. The Smolyansky family still holds large stakes.
-
brands owned
-
1
categories
-
0
acquisitions recorded
-
0
divestitures recorded
Company facts
- Legal name
- Lifeway Foods, Inc. (also Lifeway, LWAY)
- Type
- publicly listed company · see all publicly listed company owners
- Headquarters
- 🇺🇸 Morton Grove, Illinois, United States
- Founded
- 1986
- Tickers
- NASDAQ: LWAY
- SEC CIK
- 0000814586
- Website
- lifewaykefir.com
- Last verified
- · 1 sources
Lifeway Foods in numbers
- Lifeway Foods owns 3 consumer brands tracked here across 1 top-level categories; the largest is food with 3 brands.[1]
Everything Lifeway Foods owns
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Full-screen interactive tree →
Brand portfolio by category
Latest news about Lifeway Foods
No tagged news items yet. Deals, regulatory actions and recalls are added from SEC filings, regulators and trade press; only titles and links are stored.
Headlines link to the original publisher. Brandtree does not reproduce article text.
Frequently asked questions
What brands does Lifeway Foods own?
Lifeway Foods owns 3 consumer brands tracked here, including Lifeway, GlenOaks Farms and Fresh Made.
Is Lifeway Foods an American company?
Yes. Lifeway Foods is headquartered in Morton Grove, Illinois, United States and was founded in 1986.
Who owns Lifeway Foods?
Lifeway Foods is a publicly listed company owned by its shareholders; it trades as LWAY on the NASDAQ.
Sources (1) & corrections
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
- [1] Lifeway Foods, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-03-17 — SEC EDGAR, SEC Form 10-K, published 17 March 2026; retrieved 16 September 2026.
Report a correction Opens a pre-filled GitHub issue. See our corrections policy.