How Hamdi Ulukaya built Chobani from nothing into America's top Greek yogurt brand

Executive overview

Hamdi Ulukaya arrived in the US in 1994 with $3,000, no English, and no business experience. He stumbled into cheese-making, then spotted a derelict Kraft yogurt factory for sale and bought it with an SBA loan — despite his lawyer telling him he had no money and no chance.

American yogurt was poor quality. Hamdi knew people would pay for better. He built Chobani on that single conviction, financing growth entirely from sales without outside investors — reaching $1 billion in revenue within five years.

The core insight: bet on product quality and price it for mass-market access, not premium shelves — and let one honest first order prove the whole thesis.

Growing up and coming to America

• Raised in a semi-nomadic Kurdish community in eastern Turkey; family made and traded cheese
• Father was the tribal leader (aga) who consolidated and sold community cheese to cities
• Left Turkey in 1994 for political reasons; arrived at Adelphi University with $3,000 and zero English
• Money ran out in a month; transferred to Baruch College, then moved to a farm in upstate New York
• Lived and worked on a farm for 18 months — milking cows, driving 60 miles daily to English class in Albany
• The farm reconnected him to the rural life he knew; he saw that America had farms, animals, and land

Starting the cheese business

• Father visited in 1996, tasted US feta, and called it awful — suggested importing Turkish feta
• Hamdi sourced samples, found an Armenian distributor in Queens, and began importing his brothers' cheese
• After his mother died of liver disease, the business continued but the import model had limits: currency risk, thin margins
• Father's second idea: make feta locally — domestic feta was poor quality, leaving obvious room to compete
• Got a local development grant and an SBA-backed loan; opened a small factory in Johnstown, NY (2002) under the name Euphrates
• First two years were the hardest of his life — wrong milk profile, inconsistent texture, tiny sales volumes
• Drove the East Coast sleeping in a van, signing hundreds of small Greek distributors to survive
• Hit ~$2 million in sales by 2005 with 40 employees; barely viable, but alive

Finding the yogurt factory

• While clearing junk mail, pulled out a flyer: "Fully equipped yogurt plant for sale" — a former Kraft/Breyers facility in South Edmeston, NY
• Price was $700,000 — Hamdi initially thought it was $7 million given the size (67,000 sq ft)
• His lawyer said: "You do not have $700,000. You will never have $700,000." And refused to encourage him
• KeyBank bankers introduced him to SBA backing; he wrote a two-page business plan and got the loan
• Toured the plant with the outgoing manager; rehired four key workers who knew every pipe, line, and vendor by memory
• Spent summer 2005 cleaning, painting, and refitting — no blueprints existed for the old facility

Building Chobani

• Drove to Wisconsin to inspect a used centrifuge separator (Greek-style yogurt requires straining whey — roughly $1M new)
• Named the brand on that drive: Chobani — Turkish for shepherd, also resonates in Greek
• Sourced European-style cups from a plant in Bogota, Colombia — no US packaging supplier would work with him
• Designed distinct foil lids per flavour — unusual at the time, intended to catch eyes on shelf
• Perfected the recipe through trial and error: milk, live cultures, precise temperature and incubation, then blending to remove lumps without breaking texture
• Obsessed over texture: yogurt on the lid of a cup meant a bad day

Breaking into retail

• First retail account: a kosher grocery in Great Neck, NY (2007) — four flavours, ~50-60 cases each
• Second order confirmed repeat buyers; that was enough signal
• Bypassed natural/specialty channels deliberately — wanted mass-market stores where ordinary people shop
• ShopRite listing fee: ~$30,000 per SKU; Hamdi had no cash to pay upfront
• Negotiated to deduct the fee from future invoices; offered the factory itself as collateral if product didn't sell
• ShopRite buyer called within weeks: "I don't know what you're putting in this yogurt, but I cannot keep it on the shelf"
• Priced below cost for the first two months to drive trial — planned to lose money short-term to build repeat purchase
• First system-wide order from ShopRite: 25,000 cases per week (he thought it was a typo)

Scaling under pressure

• Demand outran capacity immediately; staff slept in the factory, worked through every holiday
• Converted cooler space into filler rooms, toilets into offices — anything to keep product moving
• Hired refugees from Utica through the local refugee centre; bussed workers in, hired translators, built a community workforce
• Financed all growth internally — no outside investors until 2014; ran the company on QuickBooks past $600M in revenue
• Reached $260M revenue by 2010; over $1B within five years of launch
• Turned down multiple acquisition offers in the billions — too excited about where the journey was going to stop

The Idaho crisis

• Built a second factory in Idaho (close to 1 million sq ft, 14 production lines) in under a year to de-risk single-site dependence
• 2013: mould recall — green mould found in cups from the Idaho plant, traced to contamination in production rooms
• Recall spooked lenders; banks called in loans; the company came within one night of filing for bankruptcy
• Potential investors offered money but demanded majority equity and Hamdi's removal
• He refused: "If I'm going to die, I'm going to die now and one time — not every day for the rest of my life"
• The night before the bankruptcy filing, the bank called back with bridge financing and a six-month runway
• Recovered over the following three years; brought in TPG as an equity partner in 2014; restructured operations and leadership

Company values and growth

• Chobani took public stances on immigration and refugee resettlement — unusual for a consumer brand
• Hamdi's view: prove it works internally first, then speak publicly; every claim backed by practice inside the company
• By the time of the 2022 interview: ~20-22% of the US yogurt market; multi-billion dollar valuation
• Post-interview: acquired ready-to-drink coffee brand for $900M, acquired Daily Harvest (plant-based frozen meals), announced $1B+ factory in central New York near where Chobani started