The food industry utilizes large quantities of non-pathogenic microorganisms to enhance the healthful qualities of food and to impart functional properties to food to make it more appealing from a sensory perspective. The single largest segment of the food industry utilizing cultures is the dairy industry. This industry utilizes cultures to produce cheeses of all types as well as cultured butter, buttermilk, sour cream, kefir, and yogurt.

The cultures used by the food industry are generally grown as pure cultures in large fermentors. The manufacturers of these cultures may mechanically concentrate the cultures to very high cell densities, such as 500 billion organisms per gram of culture concentrate. These culture concentrates are generally frozen in liquid nitrogen or freeze-dried and distributed to food manufacturers in insulated shippers containing dry ice.

The end-users of these culture concentrates maintain their culture inventories in mechanical freezers, or in the case of freeze-dried cultures, in refrigerators. Depending on the culture and storage temperatures, shelf life for these products vary from several weeks to as much as two years.