Hamdi Ulukaya was born in 1972 to a Kurdish family in Turkey. His family owned and operated a sheep, goat, and dairy farm near the Euphrates River in İliç, Erzincan Province, where they made cheese and yogurt. The family often led a seasonally semi-nomadic existence tending and herding their flocks. Ulukaya is uncertain of his exact birth date because he was born during one of the family’s mountain treks, although he uses October 26 as his birthday.

After studying political science at Ankara University, in 1994 Ulukaya moved to the United States to study English at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York. In 1997 he moved upstate and transferred to the University at Albany, State University of New York where he enrolled in a few business courses.

He ended up taking a job on an upstate farm. During a visit, his father persuaded Ulukaya to import the family’s feta cheese from Turkey, after tasting the inferior cheese available locally. When the imported cheese proved popular, Ulukaya opened a small wholesale feta cheese plant of his own, called Euphrates, in Johnstown, New York in 2002. The venture was modestly successful but by the two-year mark it had just barely broken even. Ulukaya later recalled, “It was two years of the most challenging days of my life.”

In October 2007, he shipped his first order of Chobani, a few hundred cases, to a grocer on Long Island. The store repeated the order the following week.

In 2009, the chain stores Stop & Shop and ShopRite began carrying Chobani, and by the middle of 2009, Chobani was selling 200,000 cases a week. Later that same year, a major breakthrough came when the warehouse club stores BJ’s Wholesale Club and Costco began carrying the brand.

After BJ’s and Costco began carrying Chobani in 2009, the company doubled its sales every year through 2013. With an eye on Australian and Asian markets, in 2011 Ulukaya acquired Melbourne dairy producer Bead Foods, and began manufacturing and selling Chobani in Australia. In mid 2012, he initiated an $88.5 million expansion for the company, acquiring 100 acres next to its upstate New York facility and building an 80,000-square-foot addition. The expansion was partially funded by $1.5 million in New York State grants for economic development.

Ulukaya’s early business approach included strategies the larger companies did not use. Rather than pay stores a slotting fee, which his start-up company could not afford, he paid stores in yogurt rather than in cash to stock his wares. He also negotiated to pay off the slotting fees over time as the yogurt sold. He also implemented in-store samples so customers could taste the product and purchase it immediately. Lacking the budget for traditional marketing, after hearing customers phoning in to say that they loved Chobani, Ulukaya had his small team reach out to bloggers, Facebook, and Twitter to have constant and direct communication with consumers. In 2010 he also created a sampling truck, the CHOmobile, which handed out free cups of Chobani yogurt at festivals, parades, and other family-friendly events all over the U.S. In its first year, the sample truck gave away 150,000 full-size containers of Chobani.

Ulukaya began adding new product lines to his brand in 2010, beginning with Chobani Champions, a Greek yogurt designed for children. In 2013 he added the Chobani Bite, a small-size yogurt with flavors including chocolate; Chobani Flip, yogurt with a separate section of toppings; and Chobani Simply 100, marketed as the first and only 100-calorie Greek yogurt made with only natural ingredients. In 2014 he launched Chobani Oats, a blend of Greek yogurt, steel-cut oats and fruit; Seasonal varieties, including watermelon and pink grapefruit; Chobani Indulgent, a healthy dessert yogurt; and a 4%-fat plain Greek yogurt marketed as particularly good for cooking and baking.

From establishing Chobani, Ulukaya has given 10% of his company’s net profits to charitable causes, and to individuals and organizations working toward positive long-lasting change. In 2010 he established the company’s charitable arm, the Chobani Shepherd’s Gift Foundation, now called the Chobani Foundation, to manage this philanthropy. Donations have included major grants to support famine relief efforts in Somalia, and to underwrite the New York City Pianos project launched by Sing for Hope.

Since strained or Greek yogurt uses three times the amount of milk per cup that unstrained yogurt does, to keep up with Chobani’s ever-increasing market, and demands for higher and higher quantities of milk, in December 2012 the company opened the world’s largest yogurt factory in Twin Falls, Idaho, a $450 million investment. In 2012 Chobani had more than $1 billion in annual sales, and in 2012 it became the world’s leading yogurt brand. Ulukaya joined the world’s billionaires in the early 2010s.

In 2012, he opened Chobani SoHo, a retail yogurt cafe in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo district. The cafe offers various exotic and gourmet dishes using flavors of fresh Chobani yogurt and gourmet toppings, as well as sandwiches, soups, and coffee.

Following the success of its product in Australia, in 2014 Chobani expanded its distribution to Asia and Latin America, beginning with Singapore, Malaysia, and Panama. The company announced plans for the Caribbean as well. In April 2014, Chobani reached a deal with private-equity firm TPG for a $750-million investment, which funded the company’s expansion and the launch of a new line of products.

In 2014 Ulukaya pledged to donate $2 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He has also donated to many Muslim charities associated with Iraq and Syria and has explored philanthropic avenues for helping refugees around the world. He signed up for the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge.

Ulukaya has been noted both for his entrepreneurial skills and also his commitment to making affordable and nutritious foods using only natural ingredients. In addition to receiving awards for entrepreneurship, in April 2014 he was named by President Barack Obama as an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE) initiative – 11 selected business leaders who will encourage entrepreneurship in the U.S. and abroad. Also in 2014, the Culinary Institute of America honored him with its Leadership Award (Augie Award) in the Health and Wellness category.

In May 2015 Ulukaya announced that he will donate a majority of his wealth to help refugees around the world. The donation will be made under the auspices of The Giving Pledge, started by philanthropists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. The Giving Pledge encourages billionaires to donate at least half of their wealth, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.

Ulukaya visited the Greek island of Lesbos in September 2015 to see first-hand the situation of the mostly Syrian refugees there. In 2015 he launched the Tent Foundation to help refugees. Ulukaya said that he would like to see more companies and entrepreneurs engaged in helping refugees by providing more innovative solutions to solving the crisis, using their expertise to help refugees, and asking companies to hire refugees. At Chobani’s plants in Upstate New York and Idaho, Ulukaya has long hired refugees from around the world from regions across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

In 2015, Ulukaya attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and launched several new initiatives to help refugees while also encouraging world and business leaders to do more.

On September 29, 2015 Ulukaya spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. He urged business people to do more than “just write checks” to help alleviate the suffering of the displaced.

In October, 2015, Ulukaya was honored with a humanitarian award by the American Turkish Society (ATS) for his personal work in helping to relieve the suffering of Syrian refugees. He was given the award both for his donation of $2 million for refugees who fled their country as a result of violence, and for signing the Giving Pledge Act to donate the majority of his fortune to contribute to resolving the global refugee crisis.

In November 2015, Ulukaya was honored by the Children’s Aid Society with their Corporate Leadership Award. He was honored in recognition of his passion and his commitment to lasting change in the lives of those in need around the world.

In 2015, he had a son, Aga, with Alida Boer. In January 2018, Ulukaya married Louise Vongerichten, co-founder and president of Food Dreams Foundation and daughter of famous French-American chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Later that year in April, the couple welcomed their son, Miran.

In March 2016, Chobani announced that it will be incrementally investing almost $100 million into the Greek yogurt plants it has in Twin Falls, Idaho. In 2015 the Twin Falls plant employed more than 1,000 people, almost 100 of whom were hired in the last half of 2015. Chobani planned to add a global research and development facility for the Twin Falls scientific team, plus office expansions and an employee cafeteria. In the summer of 2016, they planned to start production of a yogurt-based dip and drinkable yogurt in the Twin Falls factory.

In 2016, Ulukaya was invited to join the Special Olympics International Board of Directors. He is part of the volunteer Board of Directors which determines international policy along with other business leaders, sport leaders, professional athletes, educators and others.

In 2016, Ulukaya received the Disruptor Awards’ Christensen Prize. He was a 2013 honoree for the same award.

A New York Times article in March 2017 highlighted Ulukaya’s efforts to work with Idaho colleges to offer technical training for workers to solve the area’s labor shortage. The Chobani yogurt plant in Twin Falls is the largest in the world and pays its workers in the area on average twice minimum wage.

In 2017, Chobani started offering six weeks of paid leave to new parents as a result of Ulukaya’s own experience when his son was born in 2015. The policy ensures that Chobani employees have the needed time to bond with their newborns, and it covers adoption, foster care and same-sex couples as well.

In March 2017, Ulukaya was featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine. The cover story was titled “How Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya Is Winning America’s Culture War.” Later that spring, Ulukaya was featured by CBSNews’ 60 Minutes on April 9, 2017 in a segment called “Chief of Chobani” that focused on his approach to business and philanthropy.

In July 2017, Ulukaya launched the Hamdi Ulukaya Initiative (HUG) to train Turkish entrepreneurs who are running existing startups or planning on starting a new venture. HUG has a $500 million budget over five years.

In January 2018, Ulukaya accepted Chobani’s Salute to Greatness Award by The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

In November 2019, Ulukaya announced Chobani’s biggest expansion to date with new oat-based products and natural dairy creamers, marking the company’s first foray outside of the yogurt aisle.

In May 2019, it was reported that the Warwick school district in Rhode Island would be instituting a policy whereby students who had outstanding school lunch debt would only be served sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwiches, causing an uproar that they were essentially “school lunch shaming” students who had delinquent accounts, aside from denying them nutritionally balanced lunches. Many of these families were struggling and this was harmful to the students on many levels. Ulukaya stepped in and paid the $77,000 USD to cover all the students’ outstanding school lunch debt.