How Chobani Founder Hamdi Ulukaya Built a Billion Dollar Business by Putting People First

On a freezing January morning in 2005, Hamdi Ulukaya found himself driving through upstate New York, searching for an old yogurt factory. The previous day, a flyer had arrived in his mail advertising a "fully equipped yogurt plant for sale." His first instinct was to throw it away. Twenty minutes later, something made him fish it out of the garbage and dial the number.

The drive that followed would change not only his life but also the lives of hundreds of workers and entire communities across America. It would lead to the creation of Chobani, now the country's leading Greek yogurt brand, and challenge everything corporate America believes about how to run a successful business.

A Factory Frozen in Time

The smell hit Ulukaya before anything else. Like milk left too long in the summer sun, it wafted from the 85-year-old Kraft factory that stood at the end of a dead-end road. Paint peeled from walls so thick they seemed built for another era. Cracks spider-webbed across every surface. The owners considered it so worthless that Ulukaya couldn't believe the asking price, thinking they must have forgotten a zero.

But what struck him most weren't the building's failings. It was the people inside.

Fifty-five workers moved through the space in near silence, their only remaining task to dismantle the plant and close it forever. Among them was Rich, the production manager who offered to show Ulukaya around. Rich didn't say much, but at every corner, he'd pause to share a memory. His father had made yogurt in these same rooms. His grandfather had crafted cream cheese here before that. Three generations of work, and now the factory was closing on Rich's watch. You could see the weight of that guilt in how he carried himself.

"This wasn't just an old factory," Ulukaya recalls. "This was a time machine. This is where people built lives, they left for wars, they bragged about home runs and report cards."

The workers accepted their fate with a grace that made Ulukaya furious. No anger. No tears. Just quiet resignation as a CEO somewhere far away, studying spreadsheets in a corporate tower, decided their community wasn't profitable enough to matter.

The Impossible Purchase

On the drive home, Ulukaya called his lawyer Mario with an idea that sounded insane even to him. He wanted to buy the factory.

Mario's response was blunt: "One of the largest food companies in the world is closing this place, and they're getting out of the yogurt business. Who the hell are you to make it work?"

It was a fair question. Ulukaya owned a small cheese shop and, by his own admission, hated business. When he called Mario again the next day, his lawyer had an even more compelling argument: "Hamdi, you have no money. You haven't even paid me in six months."

Both things were true. But Ulukaya's childhood in Turkey, near the Kurdish mountains where his family made cheese and yogurt, had taught him something about the value of simple food and community. Those hills and roads in upstate New York reminded him of home. He took out loan after loan, and by August 2005, he held the keys to the factory.

Starting with Paint

The first thing Ulukaya did was hire back four of the original 55 workers: Maria from the office, Frank who handled wastewater, Mike from maintenance, and Rich from production. At their first meeting, they looked to him for the master plan.

"We're going to go to Ace Hardware store," Ulukaya told them, "and we're going to get some paint. And we're going to paint the walls outside."

Mike wasn't impressed. "That's fine, we'll do that, but tell me you have more ideas than that."

"I do," Ulukaya replied. "We'll paint the walls white."

That was literally his only idea.

Building More Than Yogurt

What Ulukaya didn't tell his small team that summer was the vision taking shape in his mind. Within two years, they would launch a yogurt unlike anything Americans had tasted before, thick and creamy Greek yogurt they'd call Chobani, meaning "shepherd" in Turkish. They would hire back all 55 original employees, then 100 more, then 1,000 more. Every person they hired would create ten additional jobs in the local community. The town would roar back to life.

It all happened exactly as he imagined, though no one would have believed it at the time.

For five years, Ulukaya and his team practically lived at the factory. They worked through nights, weekends, and holidays to rebuild the plant. The most remarkable part? The same workers who'd been abandoned by Kraft became the ones who built Chobani into something 100 times better. Today, they all hold financial stakes in the company.

The Anti-CEO Revolution

Chobani's success made Ulukaya question everything he'd been told about business. Corporate America preaches that companies exist to maximize shareholder profits. The CEO playbook says communities and workers should sacrifice for the bottom line while executive pay soars ever higher.

"I'm here to tell you: no more," Ulukaya declares. "It's not right, it's never been right."

His alternative approach, which he calls the "anti-CEO playbook," rests on four pillars that flip conventional business wisdom on its head.

Gratitude over greed. While traditional business puts shareholders first, Ulukaya insists employees should be the priority. When Chobani distributed shares to all 2,000 employees, critics called it a PR stunt. Ulukaya saw it differently: "They earned it with their talent and with their hard work, and I don't see any other way."

Community partnership over tax breaks. When Chobani needed a second plant, Idaho wasn't on anyone's radar. Too rural, too remote, too few incentives. But Ulukaya went anyway, met with farmers and locals, broke bread with them, and built there. Today, that Idaho facility is one of the world's largest yogurt plants, and the community thrives with new schools and businesses opening every year.

Responsibility over neutrality. Conventional wisdom says businesses should avoid politics. Ulukaya disagrees. When Chobani needed workers in New York, he remembered refugees from Southeast Asia and Africa living an hour away in Utica. People warned him they didn't speak English and lacked transportation. "I don't really speak English either," he replied. "Let's get translators." They arranged buses. Today, 30 percent of Chobani's workforce consists of immigrants and refugees.

Accountability to consumers over boards. For years, the customer service number on Chobani cups was Ulukaya's personal cell phone. He answered calls himself and made changes based on feedback. "Consumer is in power," he insists. "That's the reason the business exists."

The Return on Kindness

The factory that Kraft abandoned now anchors a thriving community. The town came back to life. Chobani built one of the best Little League fields in the area. The company became America's number one Greek yogurt brand in just five years.

But for Ulukaya, the real treasure wasn't profit. It was discovering what he calls "the dignity of work, strength of character, and human spirit" in those workers everyone else had written off.

"There are people and places all around the world left out and left behind," he reflects. "But their spirit is still strong. They just want another chance."

This philosophy, the difference between return on investment and what Ulukaya calls "return on kindness," challenges every assumption about what makes a business successful. If you treat your people right, if you invest in your community, if you take responsibility for more than just profits, you don't just build a company. You build something far more valuable.

What happened in a small town in upstate New York proves a larger truth. In an era when too many businesses fixate on building walls between themselves and their communities, Ulukaya offers a different path. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do in business is exactly what he and those first four employees did in that abandoned factory.

Pick up a paintbrush and start painting those walls white.