1. Hamdi Ulukaya was born on 26 October 1972 and is a Turkish billionaire businessman, activist and philanthropist of Kurdish ethnicity based in the United States.
41 Facts About Hamdi Ulukaya
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Hamdi Ulukaya is the founder, owner, chairman, and chief executive officer of the strained yogurt brand Chobani.
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Hamdi Ulukaya started a modest feta cheese factory in 2002 on his father's advice.
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Hamdi Ulukaya was born to a dairy-farming Kurdish family in 1972 in Ilic, a small village in Turkey's Erzincan Province.
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Hamdi Ulukaya had six siblings and his family owned and operated a sheep, goat, and dairy farm near the Euphrates River in Ilic, Erzincan Province, where they made cheese and yogurt.
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Hamdi Ulukaya ended up taking a job on an upstate farm.
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Hamdi Ulukaya financed the purchase within five months with a loan from the Small Business Administration, plus local business-incentive grants.
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Hamdi Ulukaya initially named his new company Agro Farma, and hired a handful of the former Kraft employees.
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Hamdi Ulukaya decided to make an alternative to American-style yogurt, preferring the yogurt he grew up with in Turkey.
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Hamdi Ulukaya hired a yogurt master from Turkey, Mustafa Dogan, with whom he spent nearly two years developing his own yogurt recipe.
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Hamdi Ulukaya found a used one in Wisconsin and negotiated to buy it for $50,000.
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Hamdi Ulukaya negotiated to pay off the slotting fees over time as the yogurt sold.
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Hamdi Ulukaya implemented in-store samples so customers could taste the product and purchase it immediately.
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In mid-2015 Hamdi Ulukaya became the majority investor in La Colombe Coffee Roasters.
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On May 31,2024 it was announced that Hamdi Ulukaya was purchasing Anchor Brewing and was planning to re-open its operations.
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Hamdi Ulukaya acquired this brewery in June 2023 separate from Chobani.
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Hamdi Ulukaya has stated that higher wages for employees leads to greater corporate success.
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Hamdi Ulukaya stated that companies should focus on humanity and not just on their bottom lines.
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In 2017, Chobani started offering six weeks of paid leave to new parents as a result of Hamdi Ulukaya's own experience when his son was born in 2015.
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In March 2017, Hamdi Ulukaya was featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine.
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The cover story was titled "How Chobani's Hamdi Ulukaya Is Winning America's Culture War".
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Later that spring, Hamdi Ulukaya was featured by CBSNews' 60 Minutes on 9 April 2017, in a segment called "Chief of Chobani" that focused on his approach to business and philanthropy.
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In June 2019, Hamdi Ulukaya launched Milk Matters, a program to support the future of dairy farming in America.
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Hamdi Ulukaya criticized companies for chasing profits and stated that they need to focus on social responsibility.
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Hamdi Ulukaya stated that businesses were more than happy to raise prices during inflation but slow to bring them back down when costs drop.
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Hamdi Ulukaya has been committed to making affordable and nutritious foods using only natural ingredients.
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Hamdi Ulukaya pledged to donate most of his wealth, at the time of the pledge at least 700 million dollars, to help the Kurdish refugees, as well as refugees from all around the world.
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In 2014 Hamdi Ulukaya pledged to donate $2 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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Hamdi Ulukaya has donated to many Muslim charities associated with Iraq and Syria and has explored philanthropic avenues for helping refugees around the world.
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Hamdi Ulukaya signed up for The Giving Pledge, a philanthropic initiative by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
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Hamdi Ulukaya visited the Greek island of Lesbos in September 2015 to see first-hand the situation of the mostly Syrian refugees there.
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At Chobani's plants in Upstate New York and Idaho, Hamdi Ulukaya has long hired refugees from around the world from regions across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
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In 2015, Hamdi Ulukaya attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and launched several new initiatives to help refugees while encouraging world and business leaders to do more.
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In 2016, Hamdi Ulukaya was invited to join the Special Olympics International Board of Directors.
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Hamdi Ulukaya is part of the volunteer Board of Directors which determines international policy along with other business leaders, sport leaders, professional athletes, educators and others.
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Hamdi Ulukaya stepped in and paid the US$77,000 to cover all the students' outstanding school lunch debt.
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Hamdi Ulukaya was a member of the Upstate Regional Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and previously was vice chair of the corporate fund board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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Hamdi Ulukaya is on the board of the Pathfinder Village Foundation in Edmeston, New York.
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Hamdi Ulukaya was briefly married in the late 1990s to New York City doctor Ayse Giray.
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In January 2018, Hamdi Ulukaya married Louise Vongerichten, co-founder and president of Food Dreams Foundation, founder of sustainable's kids clothing line Mon Coeur and daughter of famous French-American chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
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Hamdi Ulukaya has additional offices in Manhattan and Twin Falls, Idaho.