In a scant four years, Hamdi Ulukaya has built something that even Silicon Valley types should covet: a $700 million business that’s profitable, dominant and growing at a furious clip.
Even more incredible: Ulukaya makes yogurt. YOGURT. The stuff comprised of milk and culture. This is the ancient food that must be produced, packaged and shipped to grocery store chains who, if they feel like stocking their shelves, finally disseminate it to consumers. It’s perishable (like software rot, but worse). And the yogurt market is competitive, stocked with old stalwarts such as Yoplait, Dannon and Fage, the king of Greek yogurt before Ulukaya showed up.
Ulukaya, in short, is the Steve Jobs of yogurt. That makes Chobani, of course, the Apple of Greek yogurt.
Ulukaya got Chobani got off the ground in 2007 with the help of an SBA loan. Between then and now, Chobani became the largest yogurt maker in America. It started with Ulukaya winning over upstate New York shops. Then came regional chains, then New England, then national coverage. Chobani became one of the primary engines in the great American discovery of Greek yogurt. Ulukaya could barely keep up with demand. Sometimes he couldn’t. His yogurt plant in New Berlin, NY used to see one milk truck a day. Now it sees 75.
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