Hamdi Ulukaya tossed a junk mail flyer for a shuttered yogurt factory straight in the trash. But something spoke to him and he pulled it back out.
That decision changed the course of his life, and created the #1 Greek yogurt brand in the U.S.
In this issue, I take you on Hamdi's journey in building Chobani as well as share:
3 storytelling lessons on grounding your story, Hamdi style
The cultural shift Chobani has had on the American diet
A video where Hamdi explains his "warrior and shepherd" approach to leadership
Enjoy this story about how a man born on the side of a mountain changed the yogurt landscape…LG
Founder Story: Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani
Hamdi Ulukaya doesn't know the exact day he was born.
He came into the world during a mountain trek in eastern Turkey, as his family moved livestock through the highlands. No hospital. No record. Just a moment somewhere between valleys.
He grew up near the Euphrates River in a Kurdish dairy-farming family with six siblings. Summers meant the mountains, making cheese, yogurt, and butter as part of the annual cycle.
Yogurt was one of his favorite snacks. It was a staple at every meal. His mother made it from scratch. Thick. Tangy. Pulled from sheep's milk.
In the mountains, money didn't matter much. There was nowhere to spend it. What mattered was trust. Reputation. Sharing what you had. Respect came from character, not possessions.
When he moved to places where money drove daily life, the divide was hard to miss. People with power, disconnected from the people doing the work. Fortunes built on the labor of others.
That suspicion stayed with him. Long before he had the language for it, he was forming the beliefs that would later define his business philosophy:
What mattered was trust. Reputation. Sharing. Not possessions.
COMING TO AMERICA
Hamdi Ulukaya was the first in his family to go to college.
He enrolled at Ankara University to study political science in the early 1990s, as tensions between the Turkish government and Kurdish groups escalated.
He started a student newspaper calling out human rights abuses.
One day, police took him into custody. He was held overnight. That was enough.
So at twenty-two, he left Turkey for the United States with about $3,000 and almost no English.
He landed on Long Island, enrolled at Adelphi to learn the language, then later moved to the University at Albany to study business.
He worked on farms in upstate New York, milking cows and hauling feed, staying close to the only trade his family had ever known.
THE FETA CHEESE EXPERIMENT
When his father visited in the late 90s, Hamdi went to buy the foods he grew up eating. Bread. Olives. Feta.
The local feta cheese was terrible.
His father pushed him to import the family's feta from Turkey.
A few years later, he started a feta cheese company called Euphrates in upstate New York, named after the river near his childhood home.
Over four years, he grew it to about 40 employees and $2 million in sales, but it barely broke even. The product was too niche for American tastes.
Still, the experience mattered.
He learned how food manufacturing worked in the U.S., from supply chains to distribution to regulation.
And what American consumers actually wanted.
One thing became clear. He hated American yogurt. Too sugary. Too watery. Too artificial.
If he wanted the thick, tangy yogurt he had grown up eating in Turkey, he had to make it himself at home.
THE JUNK FLYER
In the spring of 2005, he received a piece of junk mail from a local real estate company. A fully equipped yogurt factory in South Edmeston, New York, about an hour from his feta operation, was for sale for $700,000.
The plant was 84 years old. Kraft Foods had run it for 75 of those years before shutting it down, laying off 55 people in the process. What's more, the factory was in a small town and sat on a country road between a biker bar and a cemetery.
He threw the flier in the trash. But for some reason, a half hour later, he pulled it back out.
The next day he drove to see it for himself. The plant was a sad place, with old equipment and workers preparing to shut it down for good.
The shuttered yogurt plant Hamdi took a chanse on
Despite its dilapidated condition, he saw potential in the plant, particularly in its equipment. Some of that equipment would have cost more than $1M.
But what moved him most were the people. A big corporation had closed the factory without knowing a single one of their names.
His attorney told him not to buy it. His business advisor agreed.
He decided to do it anyway.
THE SBA LOAN
To buy the plant, he needed capital he didn't have.
His small cheese business was barely breaking even, and traditional financing wasn't an option. Through KeyBank, he learned about loans backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
He moved quickly. In just two days, he wrote a business plan, put up 10% of the purchase price, and signed a personal guarantee to secure an SBA 504 loan.
With that financing in place, he purchased the factory in August 2005 for $1 million and named the company Agro Farma, which stood for agricultural farm.
He hired five former Kraft employees and got to work.
There was no money for contractors, so the first project was painting the factory walls.
He showed up with a paintbrush and painted alongside his crew every day that summer.
Once the building was in better shape, he brought over a yogurt master named Mustafa Dogan from Turkey.
Together with the yogurt master and former Kraft employees, they worked to create a yogurt that was thicker and creamier than regular yogurt, with twice the protein and none of the preservatives and artificial flavors.
They tested hundreds of recipes, experimenting with different cultures, temperatures, and fermentation times. It took eighteen months to get the recipe right. He refused to rush it.
As the product came together, he realized the company needed a name that carried meaning.
He chose Chobani, from the Turkish word çoban, meaning "shepherd."
It reflected how he saw leadership: care for people, guide them, stay close to the source.
The name also tied directly back to his childhood in the mountains with his family's herds. This wasn't just branding. It was the philosophy behind the company.
THE 300
After nearly 18 months of product development, Chobani was ready to enter the market.
The company's first shipment, completed in October 2007, included five flavors:
blueberry, peach, strawberry, vanilla, and plain.
The first 300 cases went to a single Long Island grocery store.
The product sold out. The store reordered. It sold out again.
At the time, Dannon and Yoplait owned 71% of the American yogurt market. Greek yogurt made up just 2%, nearly all of it from Fage.
The company couldn't afford slotting fees, so he paid retailers in yogurt instead of cash and negotiated to cover the difference over time. He set up in-store sampling so customers could taste before buying.
THE DAIRY AISLE
Existing Greek yogurt brands like Fage were sold in specialty stores at premium prices, stocked in the gourmet or natural food sections. He insisted Chobani go in the dairy aisle of mainstream grocery stores, right next to Dannon and Yoplait.
Hamdi called it the single most important decision the company ever made.
By mid-2009, Chobani was shipping 200,000 cases a week. Stop & Shop, ShopRite, BJ's, and Costco all carried the brand.
By 2010, just three years after the first shipment, the company had grown from five employees to over six hundred, with annual revenue approaching $250 million.
By 2012, it hit $1 billion.
During that time, he never took a call from a venture capitalist or private equity firm. Every penny went back into building factories.
He knew the moment he took outside money, the clock would start ticking. Investors would push to sell within five or seven years, probably to a big food company.
He had seen other small brands go that route and lose their souls.
THE WHITE ENVELOPES
In April 2016, he called an all-hands meeting and handed every one of his roughly 2,000 employees a white envelope. Inside was a document showing how many shares of Chobani they had been granted, ten percent of the company, split according to tenure.
At the time, Chobani was valued at $3 billion. The average grant worked out to approximately $150,000 per person.
Factory workers. Line operators. The people who had shown up when there was nothing but wet paint on the walls. Some of them cried.
He did not call it a gift. He called it recognition of what already belonged to them.
Today, Chobani expects to post $3.8 billion in sales in 2025, employs thousands of workers across two plants and a third breaking ground in Rome, New York, and is now valued at $20 billion.
Roughly 30 percent of its workforce are immigrants and refugees. Over twenty languages are spoken on the factory floors.
The Warrior and the Shepherd. And his flock.
Storytelling Lessons: Start With What Fed You
Hamdi Ulukaya’s story never leaves the ground. Every turning point traces back to something physical, a flier in the trash, a factory that looked like a cemetery, a cup of yogurt that tasted wrong. The story moves on concrete details that moved him, not abstract ideas.
Here are three storytelling lessons to embed in your approach:
#1. Root Your Story In A Lifelong Love Or Frustration
Hamdi grew up loving yogurt, but when he moved to America, he found it disappointing and made his own at home for years. That distinction, between living a problem and spotting an opportunity, is what makes his story feel natural and inevitable.
ACTION: Identify a long-running love or frustration in your life. Build your founder story around that. The deeper the roots, the more your audience believes you are the right person to solve it.
#2. Let A Single Moment Carry The Origin
The junk mail flier is the engine of his origin story. He throws it away, pulls it back out, and drives to the factory. That sequence gives the audience something to hold on to and makes the pivot feel like a clear turning point.
ACTION: Find one moment that represents the shift. A decision. A call. Something you almost ignored. Shape your story around it so your audience has something concrete to remember.
#3. Show Who You Built It For, Not Just What You Built
Hamdi does not focus on yogurt formulations or market share. He talks about the 55 workers who lost their jobs, painting the factory with his team, and sharing ownership with employees. The product is secondary. The people are the story.
ACTION: When you tell your story, shift the spotlight from your product to the people affected by the problem. Show what their situation looked like before and after. Human stakes matter more than product details.
Fun Fact: The Chobani Effect
Americans now eat about 14.5 pounds of yogurt per person each year.
A big part of that shift traces back to one company.
Chobani holds 20% of the total U.S. yogurt market, meaning 1 out of every 5 yogurts sold carries its name. In Greek yogurt, it’s closer to 40% share, or 2 out of every 5 cups.
What was once a niche product is now mainstream, driven in large part by Chobani’s rise.
Not bad for a guy who was born on a hillside.
Lyn Graft and Hamdi Ulukaya. Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, Austin, TX
Video to Watch: The Warrior Sheppard
A few years back I got to meet and film Hamdi at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit and got to experience his unique and special approach to entrepreneurship and leadership firsthand.
What stands out is how clearly he lives what he believes. He describes his leadership as a balance between two roles: the warrior and the shepherd.
The warrior fights to win. To prove the model works. To compete and build something that lasts.
The shepherd cares for people. Lifts them up. Protects the culture and the community around the business.
What I love is that Hamdi proved you can do both. Care deeply for your people. Fight to win. And build something lasting for all of your stakeholders.
Watch here.
Conscious Capitalism - Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder of Chobani | Stay True to Your Mission in Business
Need help with your story? I got you.
Send an email to [email protected] and someone from my team will circle back with you.
P.S. This one’s for my BFF as she finally brings her vision to life. #betheONE