Latest news with #Ulukaya
Eater
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
At Long Last, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Has Returned
It was back in 2022 that the organizers of the Gilroy Garlic Festival let the greater garlic community know there'd be no more grand festivities, 'indefinitely.' Thankfully, the drought is over: from July 25 to 27, there'll be a smaller, more intimate garlic festival in Gilroy. Tickets are already waitlisted since, per the Mercury News , they sold out within hours. There'll be all the food, music, and activities of former fests, just on a smaller scale. The 3,000-person event will take place on the five-acre South County Grove next to the Gilroy Gardens theme park. In 2019, a gunman wounded 17 people and killed three attendees, and the festival went on hiatus in 2020 due to COVID-19. The festival then transitioned to a drive-thru version in 2021 and other smaller events, according to the Mercury News . The festival was founded in 1978 and became a keystone of the area's annual goings-on. Marina burger joint cited for rodent droppings Athleisure-clad diners on Chestnut Street may pause before eating at Super Duper Burgers next time. A routine city inspection found rodent droppings throughout the restaurant and bread containers stored on the floor. Though the original order instructed the restaurant's outpost to close, the San Francisco Chronicle reports the restaurant received a conditional pass; the original order's closure instruction was apparently an error. An Anchor Brewing update looks nonexistent Fans of Anchor Brewing have been waiting to see what new billionaire owner Hamdi Ulukaya would do with the steam beer-producing hometown hero. The San Francisco Standard took it upon themselves to figure it out. Unfortunately, there's been little activity since May 2024: there was a February Alcoholic Beverage Control permit secured, an April sighting of Ulukaya at Mexican restaurant Papito, and that's about it. Ciccio reopens after a fire It seems it's comeback season for two local restaurants that were hit by fires this spring. Niku Steakhouse made its comeback on Friday, May 30, after a fire in March. Now, Ciccio in Yountville — which suffered a minor fire at the end of April — is back in action as of Saturday, May 31. Mellow coffee lounge opens in Berkeley University Avenue's Wine So Cru is about to open a 'collaborative coffee lounge,' per an Instagram announcement. Styled as 42ndPour, the business will open Saturday, June 7, from 7 to 11 a.m., pouring the immaculate Hydrangea Coffee Roaster. There'll be East Bay-baked pastries and tea, too. Sign up for our newsletter.
The Onion
02-05-2025
- Business
- The Onion
Chobani CEO Warns New Hire They In The Yogurt Game Now
NEW BERLIN, NY—Taking the rookie employee aside to offer him 'a word to the wise,' Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya warned new hire Austin Cook that he was in the yogurt game now, company sources confirmed Friday. 'I don't know what they taught you back in the boonies of the almond milk world, but you better be ready to step up, because you're doing bacterial fermentation now, playboy,' Ulukaya said as he firmly jabbed a finger into Cook's chest, adding that if the new hire couldn't hack it in the yogurt game's cutthroat climate of competition and live cultures, he should do them both a favor and resign on the spot. 'You're running with the big dogs here, and I need you to eat, sleep, and breathe yogurt. You see that portrait hanging above my desk? That's the guy who invented Go-Gurt. You work hard, you can end up like him. You don't, this industry will grind you up like the fruit on the bottom of a cup of Dannon. And don't just tell me we should make kefir. I know about kefir. What I want to know is: What's seven steps beyond kefir?' At press time, Ulukaya had quietly told the new hire to get the fuck out of his building after the man proposed branching out into skyr.
Forbes
22-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Chobani's Billionaire Founder Is Investing $1.2 Billion In A State-Of-The-Art New York Dairy
Chobani's billionaire founder is going all-in on being American-made. CEO Hamdi Ulukaya broke ground this week on a new state-of-the-art facility in upstate New York that will produce one billion pounds of Chobani's yogurts, creamers and other products. Ulukaya says he will invest $1.2 billion in all, and the plan comes just a month after he also revealed he is spending $500 million to expand Chobani's plant in Idaho—and he says this is just the start. 'A lot of good food hasn't been made accessible to all,' Ulukaya, 52, tells Forbes of the expansion. 'And if you figure out how to make it accessible to all, the hardest part is how do you make sure that you actually have the manufacturing capability to do it.' 'We do everything in-house,' he continues. 'A hundred percent of the products we make. It's hard to do because that means plants.' As America's top-selling yogurt brand with $3 billion (annual revenue) and yogurt sales up 20% last year, Chobani is in a position most food companies would envy. Chobani, which acquired La Colombe coffee for $900 million in 2023, is one of the largest independent and privately held brands in the consumer packaged goods industry. And it's made Ulukaya, an immigrant from Turkey who owns the majority of the business, worth an estimated $2.4 billion. Now Ulukaya is using his clout to double down on the Northeast at a time when the region has faced an exodus of dairy farmers. Chobani and the New York governor's office are calling the investment the nation's largest in natural food manufacturing. The new plant will be financed through Chobani's cash on hand. A Chobani spokesperson said 'These projects are multi-year projects that do not require the company to take on any additional debt at this time.' In addition, incentives from New York state include $73 million in tax credits over ten years and $22 million from an economic development shovel-ready grant program, Fast NY. The new facility will be designed to process up to 12 million pounds of milk each day, which means Chobani, already New York's largest milk purchaser, will increase its spend by an estimated 6 billion pounds annually. That will be huge boon for the surviving dairy farmers in the region, many of whom have struggled as volatile prices and industry consolidation have driven many farms out of business, while major competitors like Danone have cut contracts or left the region entirely. 'Our region has really unique challenges,' says Gary Hirshberg, the founder of Stonyfield Organics, citing the Northeast's higher costs for energy as well as feed for dairy cows. 'Investment is badly needed. We've lost a lot of the dairy infrastructure. So any significant investment in upstate New York dairy, it's only a good thing.' But Hirshberg adds that sourcing additional conventional milk is 'not really solving the problem' because the milk sells for such low prices. Organic milk is better for farmers, especially those in the Northeast where the farms are far smaller than on the West Coast, he notes, because farmers need the premium price that organic milk fetches to insure that a small family farmer can still make enough money to sustain their business and withstand shocks to the industry. And there's currently an organic milk shortage. 'That's really where investment is needed,' he says. Instead, Chobani has gone mass-market. When completed, the 1.4 million-square-foot facility in Rome, New York, will be capable of handling up to 28 production lines. Sitting on 150 acres across the site of the former Griffiss Air Force Base, the new plant will be Chobani's second in the state and is expected to create 1,000 full-time jobs in the area. 'Big food has plants, infrastructure, all that stuff and that is very hard to build,' Ulukaya says. 'We spend more time on the fundamentals of the business, which is making it. To make it to the next level, it's about the fundamentals.' These massive infrastructure investments mark a full circle moment for Ulukaya. Born to a Kurdish family of farmers in a small village in eastern Turkey, he grew up learning how his family made cheese and yogurt. In 1994, he immigrated to New York to study English, and his father later asked him to import the family's feta cheese after realizing the poor quality of what was sold in the U.S. Ulukaya then started making and selling his own feta made in a small factory in upstate New York, but the business barely broke even. The right idea struck in 2005, when the then-33-year-old Ulukaya randomly came across an advertisement for a fully stocked yogurt factory for sale in South Edmeston, New York (about an hour away from the new one). The then-84-year-old plant had been shut down by Kraft, and after a tour, Ulukaya was inspired to give it a new life. Against the advice of his lawyer, Ulukaya purchased the facility with a small business loan. Feeding Frenzy: "If we can't feed our children good food, that's not a success,' Ulukaya says. 'Chobani is tomorrow's food company.' He spent two years perfecting his Greek yogurt recipe before shipping the first cases to a grocer on Long Island in 2007. From there, Chobani's Greek yogurt quickly became a hit on shelves, thanks in part to its lower sugar and higher protein levels than the American-style yogurt popular at the time. As Ulukaya pioneered a major shift in the yogurt aisle, competitors started rebranding their yogurt as Greek. But customers got confused. Poorly made products were ruining Greek yogurt's reputation, and the over-saturation of brands made the situation worse. Yet Chobani persevered and maintained its customer base, coming out of the fray stronger for it. Throughout that period, Ulukaya prioritized his New York manufacturing while building Chobani's first Northwest operation with a $450 million plant in Twin Falls, Idaho in 2012, claimed at the time to be the world's largest yogurt factory. Chobani had just surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, and the expanded infrastructure gave Ulukaya the chance to focus on quality, while most of his competitors were turning to contract manufacturers selling off-the-shelf formulas. 'The fight I give as a founder is, how do I make sure that this is still entrepreneurial, but it has structures?' Ulukaya says. As investing in infrastructure became key to Ulukaya's strategy, it also became a crucial part of why Ulukaya has maintained majority control while avoiding bringing on many outside investors, as many prioritize short-term returns over longer-term investments in self-manufacturing. 'This company is never going to be part of any other company. Never,' he says. 'This company is built to serve for a long, long time delivering good food to the people.' And now that Ulukaya has two major renovations ongoing at once—in Idaho and New York— his full vision is starting to come into view. 'We could make all the advances in life, but if we can't feed our children good food, that's not a success,' Ulukaya says. 'Chobani is tomorrow's food company.'
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Chobani, Seeing Rising Demand, Plans Giant Factory in New York
Chobani got its start in 2005 in the middle of New York State, in a decades-old Kraft factory that had become defunct, initially hiring just a few of its workers to produce Greek-style yogurt. Two decades later, the company — now one of the nation's biggest producers of dairy products — is opening another plant nearby, to significantly more fanfare and economic impact. Chobani and New York State plan to announce on Tuesday that the company will open a million-square-foot factory in Rome, N.Y., costing at least $1.2 billion, that will be able to make one billion pounds of dairy products a year. Company executives describe the plant, which they reckon will be the biggest dairy factory in the United States, as a much-needed expansion to fulfill growing demand. 'We've been growing, but that has accelerated dramatically over the last few years, eating up a lot of our capacity,' Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani's founder and chief executive, said in an interview. 'These are the preparations for growth that's coming and that we're experiencing.' The new manufacturing center, which is expected to nearly double Chobani's work force in New York State, is the latest sign of the company's ambitions. Chobani already claims to be one of the fastest-growing food companies in the United States, with net sales last year rising 17 percent, to $2.96 billion, and adjusted pretax earnings rising 26 percent, to $509 million. Chobani has said that it now controls about a fifth of the American yogurt market, citing Nielsen data. It has also branched out well beyond Greek-style yogurt, the product category it helped pioneer. The company now makes creamers, oat milk, and — since its $900 million acquisition of La Colombe in 2023 — coffee beverages. (Mr. Ulukaya last year also personally bought Anchor Brewing, a centenarian San Francisco brewer, after it went out of business.) Just one month ago, Chobani announced that it would invest $500 million to expand a factory in Idaho that is expected to bolster production by 50 percent. New York officials, eager to cement the state's standing as a giant in the agribusiness sector, said that they were keen to win the competition for the company's biggest-ever plant. That included offering millions of dollars in tax credits and grants to help support a shovel-ready site in Rome. The expense was worth Chobani's agreement to invest more than $1 billion and add more than 1,000 jobs in the Mohawk Valley region — roughly a third of the company's existing global work force — according to Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York. 'We were in high pursuit,' she said in an interview, adding that her team faced competition from other states. Chobani's growth comes at a challenging time for companies across the business spectrum. President Trump's trade threats have upended supply chains, and that has made it more difficult for Chobani to obtain the European manufacturing equipment that the company says it cannot get anywhere else. And yearslong fears about inflation have weighed on consumer-facing businesses. 'When it comes to pricing, we're very, very sensitive,' Mr. Ulukaya said, though Chobani noted that it had kept costs in check via manufacturing improvements and better economies of scale. Mr. Ulukaya added that Chobani would hold onto the socially conscious business practices that have set it apart from many other companies. They include generous benefits for employees; worker housing; and, perhaps most prominently, a yearslong commitment to hiring refugees. Nine years ago, Mr. Ulukaya's efforts to employ fellow immigrants — starting with newly arrived refugees from a resettlement center in Utica, N.Y. — drew threats on social media and conspiratorial articles on hard-right websites. Despite a second Trump administration that has made immigration crackdowns a priority, the Chobani chief said that his commitment to the cause remained steadfast, and he noted his continued work with the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a nonprofit that he founded. 'We cannot operate any other way,' he said. 'To me, anybody is welcome.' What comes next for Chobani, according to Mr. Ulukaya, may include finally going public. The company filed for an initial public offering in 2021, most likely at a multibillion-dollar valuation, but officially postponed the move the next year amid challenging market conditions. Mr. Ulukaya pointed to the company's financials as signs of solid health, and he said that employees with stock holdings would benefit from Chobani's being publicly traded. But for now, he said, the focus is on the more than $1 billion that the company is investing in New York State and Idaho. 'An I.P.O. is a possibility,' he said. 'But I haven't made up my mind.'
National Geographic
18-03-2025
- Politics
- National Geographic
Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya believes refugees make companies stronger
The son of nomadic sheep farmers and a member of Turkey's ethnic Kurdish minority, Hamdi Ulukaya was the first in his family to go to college, enrolling at Ankara University. It was the early nineties, a time of heightened tensions between government forces and Kurdish separatists, and Ulukaya founded a newspaper in which he called out the human rights abuses faced by his fellow Kurds. One day, he recalls, he was taken into police custody. He was only detained for a night, but the experience convinced him that he needed to leave the country. 'I was forced to leave,' he says. 'I did not leave because I dreamed about going to America.' He went to an agency that helped him transfer to Adelphi University, on Long Island, New York, where he learned English. Eventually, he started a business importing his family's feta cheese, and in 2005 he read about a yogurt plant for sale near the city of Utica. Suddenly, he had a vision: He would start his own company making Turkish-style yogurt, thick and tangy. He had no real money, no business education. But he cobbled together a loan and started Chobani (Turkish for 'shepherd'). Seven years later, they were doing a billion dollars in sales. Ulukaya often thinks about others who arrive in this country fleeing persecution. That's what brought him to the refugee resettlement center in Utica, where he encountered people of some 16 different nationalities. 'The only reason they don't work is they don't have driver's licenses or cars,' he says. 'And they don't speak the language. I said, 'Okay. Similar to me.'' He hired five refugees, then 10, then 300, including Somalis, Nepalis, and Afghans. Over 20 languages were spoken at the yogurt plant, yet he felt that somehow his workforce was more cohesive than ever.
