Isaac Carasso

Isaac Carasso was a Sephardic Jewish entrepreneur from Thessaloniki who settled in Barcelona. Inspired by research at the Pasteur Institute on lactic ferments, he began producing yogurt in 1919 and sold it through pharmacies as a digestive health product.

Isaac Carasso founded Danone in Barcelona in 1919, naming the yogurt after his son Daniel ('Danon' in Catalan). His son Daniel Carasso founded the Societe Parisienne du Yoghourt Danone in Paris in 1929 and, after fleeing the Nazi occupation, co-founded Dannon Milk Products in New York in 1942. Daniel later returned to France, and the business merged with Antoine Riboud's glassmaker-turned-food group BSN in 1973, forming the company that took the Danone name in 1994.