![]() He made feta using cow’s milk rather than the traditional sheep’s milk, which can be too tangy for unaccustomed palates. Eventually, he opened a small factory in Johnstown, New York, where he began adapting his family’s cheese-making recipes to local sources and American tastes. Initially, Ulukaya imported some of his family’s cheeses and sold them to an Armenian distributor in New York City. In any case, he wasn’t sure how else he could succeed in America, and he did not want to return to Turkey: he is a Kurd, an ethnic group that has been subjected to discrimination there. He felt confident that he could make, and find customers for, a better feta. The countryside around Troy was filled with excellent dairy farms-the problem was merely a matter of craft. But the more Ulukaya considered the notion the more promising it appeared. His father, who was equally unimpressed after sampling it, made a suggestion: why not go into the cheese business and market a really good feta?Īt first, Ulukaya dismissed the idea-why come all the way from Turkey to do what he could have done back home? His grandfather had raised sheep and goats in eastern Turkey, near the Euphrates, and his father had become the owner of a successful small business, manufacturing cheese and yogurt from the family’s yield and that of other local farmers. But the only cheese that Ulukaya could find in the local supermarket was flavorless. In anticipation, Ulukaya shopped for the foods that his father customarily ate for breakfast: bread, olives, and feta cheese. ![]() One day, his father called and announced plans to visit. He had left home for America two years earlier. In 1996, Hamdi Ulukaya, a twenty-five-year-old student from Turkey, was attending language school in Troy, New York. Five years after Chobani was launched, it has reached a billion dollars in revenue. ![]()
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