The flyer went in the trash. In 2005 a brochure reached Hamdi Ulukaya's mailbox advertising a yogurt plant Kraft was closing in South Edmeston, New York. He threw it away. The next day he drove to see the plant anyway.
He was born in a Kurdish dairy-farming family in Ilic, a village in Erzincan, Turkey, one of seven children. The family kept sheep and goats near the Euphrates, made cheese and yogurt, and moved with the flocks through the mountains. He studied political science at Ankara University and joined the Kurdish-rights movement, publishing a newspaper critical of how the state treated Kurds. That drew the attention of the authorities. In 1994 he left for the United States to study English at Adelphi, and he has named escaping that treatment as a reason.
Then his father suggested he import the family's feta from Turkey, because the local cheese was poor.
What he cannot tell you is his own birthday. He was born during a trek in the mountains, so no one recorded the date. He uses 26 October.
In America he worked on an upstate farm and moved to the University at Albany in 1997. Then his father suggested he import the family's feta from Turkey, because the local cheese was poor. It sold. In 2002 he opened a small plant, Euphrates, in Johnstown. By its second year it only just broke even.
The Kraft plant was a bigger gamble. His lawyer and business advisor told him not to. He bought it anyway, financing it within five months through an SBA loan and local grants. Then came nearly two years with a Turkish yogurt master working out a thick strained recipe. He later called them "two years of the most challenging days of my life."
There was no money for ads or for the fees stores charge for shelf space, so he paid in yogurt and negotiated to settle the fees over time. Chobani launched in 2007, entered Costco and BJ's in 2009 and passed $1 billion in annual sales in 2010.
Success brought bills. A $130,000 fine in 2012 for overpumping water. A recall in 2013. Boycott calls and threats in 2016 over hiring refugees, the year he gave employees a 10 percent stake. An IPO filed in 2021 was withdrawn in 2022 after five years of net losses. In October 2025 the company raised $650 million at about a $20 billion valuation.
Ulukaya did not invent yogurt. He came from people who had always made it, arrived somewhere that did not know what it was missing, and kept looking at the flyer he had already thrown away.