Latest news with #Ulukaya
Miami Herald
07-07-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
One of America's oldest breweries may really be shut down forever
Anchor Steam Brewing Company survived the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, prohibition, two world wars, and several periods of social unrest. But the pandemic and the inflation that followed were just a touch too much. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter So in 2023, and after 127 years in operation, the company announced it would shut down, making it just one of many craft brewer to shut its doors that year. However, Anchor Steam is unique in the sector. It's one of the oldest breweries in the U.S. and widely regarded as one of the first modern craft breweries here, so its closure hurt more than most. Beer lovers around the world (including me) were devastated because the beer was delicious. One of the best things about living in San Francisco was how easy it was to find on tap. But the brewer's sales had been declining since 2016, and in 2017, Japanese beer giant Sapporo acquired Anchor Steam for around $85 million. Shortly after the announcement, Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of the yogurt company Chobani, purchased Anchor Brewing's recipes, brand, and intellectual property from Sapporo and promised to "bring Anchor back the right way." There was much hope that the brewery would get a second chance at life, but now, two years after Ulukaya's public commitment, those plans are on pause. Despite a promise to restore Anchor Steam Brewing Company's production facility and return brewing operations to the city where it began in 1896, Ulukaya's team recently told The San Francisco Standard that they have no intention of reopening the original brewery or reestablishing a physical taproom in the city - at least for now. Instead, the beer will now be brewed by a contract partner outside the city. While the brand may live on, its deep roots in San Francisco - and its significance to the American craft beer movement - appear severed. Related: Beloved brewery and bar chain closing, no bankruptcy One challenge may be that a dormant facility, such as the one in San Francisco, would take some time to become operational. The traditional production methods that make use of San Francisco's ambient yeast mean you can't just a flip a switch and start pumping out bottles of Liberty Ale or Anchor Steam. Maintaining Anchor's adherence to old-style methods, including the use of open-air fermentation tanks and copper equipment, may require a learning curve for new employees. Brewing Anchor Steam the way "California common," as it is known, is brewed requires a craftsman's touch and a lot of patience. This style of brewing is the only one to have originated in the U.S. Anchor's halted comeback underscores a larger shift in the U.S. craft beer industry, which is facing declining sales, brewery closures, and rising costs. In 2024, more than 500 craft breweries shut down, according to the Brewers Association. Even legacy brands like Anchor, credited with jumpstarting the modern craft beer movement, are struggling to survive. Consumers are drinking less beer overall, and younger drinkers are opting for hard seltzers, canned cocktails, or alcohol-free options instead. Meanwhile, inflation has driven up the cost of raw ingredients, labor, and rent, especially in pricey areas like San Francisco. Related: Struggling department store chain shares more bad news Contract brewing, where brands outsource production to third-party facilities, has become an increasingly common survival strategy. But it often comes at the expense of authenticity and community connection - two values that once defined craft beer. Anchor Steam's planned shift to contract production highlights that tension. While Ulukaya's team says they still intend to honor the brand's legacy, some industry observers say a beer brewed hundreds of miles away and served without a taproom presence lacks the soul of the original. Still, hope springs eternal, and I look forward to the day when I can visit my favorite taproom again. Related: Another classic off-the-Las Vegas Strip resort casino closes The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Business Insider
18-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Chobani's founder says the Make America Healthy Again movement's ingredient crackdown poses a big risk for food makers
Artificial dyes and other food ingredients are getting more scrutiny these days. Chobani 's founder welcomes it — but says the movement could create problems for food makers. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has talked about removing some artificial ingredients from foods, both before and after he became a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet this year. It's one of the priorities of Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" movement, known as MAHA, for short. Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO of yogurt brand Chobani, said Tuesday that he's long supported removing ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and artificial coloring from food. Part of Chobani's pitch to customers is that its yogurt doesn't contain artificial ingredients. However, removing some ingredients can create unintended blowback from customers and create challenges for food companies as they try to make better products, Ulukaya said, speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Global Food Forum. Ulukaya provided an example: Chobani made a small change to its oat milk that had big trade-offs customers immediately noticed. Previously, Chobani used dipotassium phosphate in its oat milk. The compound made the drink foam better, Ulukaya said. This quality won favor with baristas and coffee drinkers. Chobani recently removed the ingredient, a process that took two years, Ulukaya confirmed during the presentation. Some customers seem to miss it, Ulukaya said. "Yesterday, I got a consumer complaint, and it said 'My oat milk is not foaming as good as it used to,'" he said. Reviews of Chobani's oat milk on its website confirm that some people aren't happy with the new version. "Lost a customer due to recipe change," reads the title of one recent review. Ulukaya has also gotten customer complaints about ingredient changes as subtle as the type of vanilla it uses. "You have to be open that some of the people are not going to like some of those changes," he said. This points to a challenge for food manufacturers that are being urged by the MAHA movement to use fewer artificial ingredients: Making changes to products might turn away loyal buyers. "They don't want to take those risks," he said, referring to food companies. "People get really, really pissed." Food with better ingredients also has to be broadly accessible and affordable to shoppers in order to make a difference, Ulukaya said. Food manufacturers use some artificial or added ingredients, such as processed sugar, to make food taste better without raising costs. "Everybody wants to eat good, but I don't want to pay $3 for a cup of yogurt," he said.
Eater
02-06-2025
- 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.'
