Hamdi Ulukaya (born 26 October 1972) is a Turkish billionaire businessperson, activist and philanthropist of Kurdish ethnicity based in the United States. He is the founder, owner, chair, and CEO of the strained yogurt brand Chobani. He is among the 300 richest people in the world, with a fortune of $13.7B, as of April 2026.
Ulukaya, a Kurd, has stated his strong commitment to Kurdish rights, citing this as a reason for leaving Turkey due to the Turkish state's oppression of its Kurdish minority. He started a modest feta cheese factory in 2002 on his father's advice. His major success came when he purchased a large, defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York in 2005, located in a region with a history in the dairy and cheese industry since the mid-nineteenth century. Chobani achieved over $1 billion in annual sales in less than five years after its launch, becoming a leading yogurt brand in the U.S. by 2011.Winograd, David. "Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya: Startups Are 'Cool' But Let's Focus On People Who 'Make Things'", Huffington Post. 18 June 2013."Chobani Takes Top Spot as America's #1 Selling Yogurt Brand". Reuters. 20 April 2011."Chobani Yogurt CEO: I Had No Business Experience". Bloomberg TV. 12 February 2014. Ulukaya was named the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Of The Year in 2013,"Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2013" . Ernst & Young. 9 June 2013. and Inc. magazine named him as "one of the most important entrepreneurs of the past decade" in 2019. In July 2022, UN Secretary General António Guterres appointed him as an additional advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
Early life and education Hamdi Ulukaya was born in 1972, to a Kurdish dairy-farming family in İliç, a small village in Turkey's Erzincan. He had six siblings and his family owned and operated a sheep, goat, and dairy farm near the Euphrates River in İliç, Erzincan, where they made cheese and yogurt.Gross, Daniel. "It's All Greek to Him: Chobani's Unlikely Success Story". Newsweek. 12 June 2013.Weisul, Kimberly. "How Turkish 'Dairy Boy' Hamdi Ulukaya Started $600 Million Chobani". Inc. 17 October 2012.Mead, Rebecca. "Just Add Sugar: How an immigrant from Turkey turned Greek yogurt into an American snack food", The New Yorker. 4 November 2013. The family often led a seasonally semi-nomadic existence tending and herding their flocks. Ulukaya is uncertain of his exact birth date because he was born during one of the family's mountain treks, although he uses 26 October as his birthday.
While studying political science at the School of Political Science, Ankara University, Ulukaya became involved in the Kurdish-rights movement, attending demonstrations and publishing a newspaper that criticized the Turkish state's treatment of Kurds, which drew the attention of authorities. In 1994, citing a desire to escape Turkey's mistreatment of its Kurdish minority as well as to further his education, Ulukaya moved to the United States to study English at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York."Honorary Degree Recipients: Hamdi Ulukaya, Doctor of Humane Letters". Colgate University, 2013. Colgate.edu. In 1997, he moved upstate and transferred to the University at Albany, State University of New York where he enrolled in a few business courses.Prasso, Sheridan. "Chobani: The unlikely king of yogurt", Fortune. 12 December 2011.
He ended up taking a job on an upstate farm. During a visit, his father persuaded Ulukaya to import the family's feta cheese from Turkey, after tasting what he perceived to be inferior cheese available locally. When the imported cheese proved popular, Ulukaya opened a small wholesale feta cheese plant of his own, called Euphrates, in Johnstown, New York in 2002.Prasso, Sheridan. "Chobani: The unlikely king of yogurt", Fortune. 12 December 2011.Fifield, Anna. "Founder follows his gut instincts". Financial Times. 9 April 2013. The venture was modestly successful but by the two-year mark it had just barely broken even. Ulukaya later recalled, "It was two years of the most challenging days of my life."
Business ventures
Inception and development In the spring of 2005, Ulukaya noticed a piece of junk mail advertising a fully equipped yogurt factory for sale in South Edmeston, New York, west of his feta cheese factory. The 84-year-old factory had been closed by Kraft Foods.Gruley, Bryan. "At Chobani, the Turkish King of Greek Yogurt". BusinessWeek. 31 January 2013. Although he initially threw the flier away, Ulukaya toured the plant the following day and decided to buy it, against the advice of his attorney and business advisor. Ulukaya financed the purchase within five months with a loan from the Small Business Administration, plus local business-incentive grants.Needleman, Sarah E. "Old Factory, Snap Decision Spawn Greek-Yogurt Craze". Wall Street Journal. 20 June 2012. He initially named his new company Agro Farma, and hired a handful of the former Kraft employees.
Ulukaya decided to make an alternative to American-style yogurt, preferring the yogurt he grew up with in Turkey.Ulukaya, Hamdi. "Chobani's Founder on Growing a Start-Up Without Outside Investors" . Harvard_Business_Review. October 2013. (alternate posting: ). He hired a yogurt master from Turkey, Mustafa Dogan, with whom he spent nearly two years developing his own yogurt recipe. To manufacture strained yogurt, Ulukaya needed a million-dollar commercial machine called a milk separator, which the American-style Kraft factory did not have. He found a used one in Wisconsin and negotiated to buy it for $50,000. On his trip to pick up the separator, the name "Chobani", a variation of çoban, the Turkish word for shepherd occurred to him.
Ulukaya made Chobani yogurt without preservatives."Agro-Farma's Ulukaya Interview About Chobani Yogurt". Bloomberg TV. 29 April 2011. Since he could not afford advertising, he invested time and money on the product's packaging, using a distinctive new bowl-style shape to differentiate the brand.
Launch In October 2007, he shipped his first order of Chobani, a few hundred cases, to a grocer on Long Island. The store repeated the order the following week.
Ulukaya's early business approach included strategies larger companies did not use. Rather than pay stores a slotting fee, which his start-up company could not afford, he paid stores in yogurt rather than in cash to stock his wares. He also negotiated to pay off the slotting fees over time as the yogurt sold.Walden, Mark. "Hamdi Ulukaya tells his story at Entrepreneur Weekend", Colgate University – Colgate News. Colgate.edu. 8 April 2013. He also implemented in-store samples so customers could taste the product and purchase it immediately.Pride, William; Hughes, Robert; Kapoor, Jack. Business. Cengage Learning, 2013. p. 395. Lacking the budget for traditional marketing, after hearing customers phoning in to say that they loved Chobani, Ulukaya had his small team reach out to bloggers, Facebook, and Twitter to have constant and direct communication with consumers. In 2010 he also created a sampling truck, the CHOmobile, which handed out free cups of Chobani yogurt at festivals, parades, and other family-friendly events all over the U.S."Chobani Founder: Why Quality & Community Are they Keys To Brand Success". PSFK.com. April 2013."Chobani Increases Its Appetite for Business Growth With Microsoft Technologies". Microsoft News Center. 19 March 2013. In its first year, the sample truck gave away 150,000 full-size containers of Chobani.Walters, Kath. "CMI Industrial door closes, Chobani Australia opens" . Leading Company. 3 May 2012.
Expansion After BJ's and Costco began carrying Chobani in 2009, the company doubled its sales every year through 2013.Grenoble, Ryan. "Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani Yogurt Founder, One Of The World's Newest Billionaires". Huffington Post. 14 September 2012. In December 2012 the company opened the world's largest yogurt factory in Twin Falls, Idaho, a $450 million investment.Strom, Stephanie. "U.S. Hunger for Yogurt Leads to Gigantic Factory". The New York Times. 16 December 2012. Two additional milestones occurred in 2012: Chobani had more than $1 billion in annual sales,Pride, William; Hughes, Robert; Kapoor, Jack. Foundations of Business. Cengage Learning, 2014. p. 232."Chobani Hires Two Top Executives". FoodProcessing.com. 12 July 2013. and it became the world's leading yogurt brand.
By 2017, Chobani reached a US market share of Greek yogurt of over 50%. Chobani expanded internationally to Australia in 2011, into Mexico in 2016, and by 2021, it exported its products to China, Malaysia and Thailand.
On 26 April 2016, Ulukaya announced to his employees that he would be giving them 10% of the shares in Chobani.
La Colombe Coffee Roasters
In mid-2015 Ulukaya became the majority investor in La Colombe Coffee Roasters.
Anchor Brewing On May 31, 2024 it was announced that Hamdi Ulukaya was purchasing Anchor Brewing and was planning to re-open its operations. He acquired this brewery in June 2023 separate from Chobani.https://www.inc.com/kim-jao/chobani-founder-hamdi-ulukaya-acquired-americas-oldest-craft-brewery.html
Business philosophy Ulukaya has stated that higher wages for employees leads to greater corporate success.
In an interview with Ernst and Young Global chairman & CEO Mark Weinberger, Ulukaya said that businessmen should promote a sense of purpose in their corporate culture to create a climate of positive change in business and the world. He stated that companies should focus on humanity and not just on their bottom lines.
When Ulukaya opened his second yogurt manufacturing plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, he created a job training program together with the College of Southern Idaho and the Chobani Foundation (formerly known as Shepherd's Gift Foundation.) He has also worked to improve the community in Twin Falls by supporting the Southern Idaho Children's Learning Center, Twin Falls Rapids Soccer Club, and other community programs.
In March 2017 The New York Times reported Ulukaya's efforts to work with Idaho colleges to offer technical training for workers to solve the area's labor shortage. The Chobani yogurt plant in Twin Falls is the largest in the world and pays its workers in the area on average twice minimum wage. Additionally, he raised the starting wage to $15 per hour as of spring 2021.
In the fall of 2017, Chobani announced a brand evolution that featured new packaging and positioned the company as a "food-focused wellness company".
In 2017, Chobani started offering six weeks of paid leave to new parents as a result of Ulukaya's own experience when his son was born in 2015. The policy ensures that Chobani employees have the needed time to bond with their newborns, and it covers adoption, foster care and same-sex couples as well.
In March 2017, Ulukaya was featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine. The cover story was titled "How Chobani's Hamdi Ulukaya Is Winning America's Culture War". Later that spring, Ulukaya was featured by CBSNews' 60 Minutes on 9 April 2017, in a segment called "Chief of Chobani" that focused on his approach to business and philanthropy.
In the spring of 2018, Ulukaya appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Good Morning America to announce that the company was celebrating its 10th anniversary as a national brand by giving a Chobani yogurt to every person in America.
In April 2019, Ulukaya gave a TED Talk on the TED conference main stage in Vancouver, entitled "The anti-CEO playbook".
In June 2019, Ulukaya launched Milk Matters, a program to support the future of dairy farming in America. Part of the program includes a new collaboration with Fair Trade USA to explore developing the first standard and certification program of the dairy industry.