Yogurt Entrepreneur Reaches out to Refugees

Issue: Corporate Social Responsibility

Short Article: Yogurt Entrepreneur Reaches Out to Refugees

By: Jonathan Broder

Pub. Date: December 4, 2017 Access Date: September 26, 2021 DOI: 10.1177/237455680335.n5 Source URL: http://businessresearcher.sagepub.com/sbr-1863-104799-2868263/20171204/short-article-yogurt-entrepreneur-reaches- out-to-refugees ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Chobani rides out anti-immigrant backlash Executive Summary

When the immigrant founder of Chobani yogurt needed to expand to meet rising demand, he tapped a labor source close to his heart: refugees in a nearby resettlement camp. He repeated the experience when he opened a second plant. Then came the reaction from anti- immigrant websites. Among the takeaways: Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish Kurd, says he came to the United States after his human rights activism on behalf of other Kurds landed him in trouble. Full Article

Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya announces his company will build a plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. (AP Photo/Times-News, Ashley Smith)

The founder of Chobani Yogurt is the classic rags-to-riches, immigrant success story – updated for these turbulent times with anti-Muslim xenophobia, conspiracy theories and death threats. Hamdi Ulukaya is no stranger to yogurt. Born into a Kurdish dairy farming family in Turkey, he immigrated to the United States in 1994 to learn English and study business. 1 After taking classes at SUNY at Albany, Ulukaya opened a small operation outside the New York state capital selling feta cheese made from a family recipe. 2 But when a local yogurt factory came up for sale in 2005, he bought it with a $800,000 loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration. 3 By 2007, Ulukaya was selling a new kind of yogurt he called Chobani. The name comes from choban, the Turkish word for shepherd. 4 The thick Greek-style yogurt he made was new to American palates and became an instant hit. As sales grew, Ulukaya needed more labor to meet demand. When he learned about a resettlement center for refugees in Utica 40 miles away, he offered them jobs paying higher than minimum wage, transportation to and from the factory and translators to explain how to operate the machinery. 5

In 2012, Ulukaya opened a second yogurt factory in Twin Falls, Idaho, where he also employed refugees living in a nearby resettlement center. 6 Today, out of Chobani’s 2,200 full-time staff, around 600 are refugees representing 19 different nationalities from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 7 “I always say the minute they have a job, that’s the minute they stop being a refugee and become part of the community,” he told an interviewer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year. 8 In interviews, Ulukaya has pointed to his own background as the source of his empathy. Growing up in eastern Turkey, where Kurds have struggled for decades for greater autonomy, he said he knew of many fellow Kurds who had fled the country because Turkish forces had bombed their villages. 9 Later, he said, while studying political science in college in Istanbul, Ulukaya became a Kurdish human rights activist and ended up a refugee himself. “I got into trouble, and I had to leave,” he said. “Within a month, I left.” 10 Once he became a factory owner, Ulukaya said, he saw that could help refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and other war-battered countries and solve his labor shortage at the same time. “They got here legally,” he told CBS’ “60 Minutes” program. “They’ve gone through a most dangerous journey. They’ve lost their family members. They’ve lost everything they have. And here they are. They’re either going to be part of society, or they’re going to lose it again. And the number one thing you can do is provide them jobs. 11 By any measure, Ulukaya’s business is an unqualified success. In 2016, Chobani racked up yogurt sales of $2 billion, second only to Dannon. 12 He himself is a billionaire. A disciple of corporate social responsibility, Ulakaya has donated millions of dollars to community programs. 13 Last year, he gave his employees shares worth up to 10 percent of the company. 14 Ulukaya also signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate the majority of his wealth to assist refugees, a crisis that he believes governments cannot address without business’ help. 15 To that end, he founded the Tent Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to help relieve the refugee crisis by getting companies to give them jobs. 16 After Ulukaya spoke about the issue at Davos last year, several major U.S. corporations, including Cisco, IBM and Salesforce, pledged to join the effort. 17 But civic-minded corporations were not the only ones paying attention. Not long afterward, he and his company became the targets of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant articles on far-right websites. One such website, WND, ran a story headlined “American Yogurt Tycoon Vows to Choke U.S. With Muslims.” 18 Then the “alt-right” website Breitbart News ran a story that tied Ulukaya’s practice of hiring refugees to two rape cases in Idaho. 19 Right-wing radio host Alex Jones also spread the story. Another Breitbart article linked Chobani’s Twin Falls plant to an alleged spike in tuberculosis cases. 20 Neither story had any merit; Chobani sued Jones for defamation and won a retraction. 21 Twins Falls Mayor Shawn Barigar Still, the articles spawned death threats against both Ulukaya and Twin Falls Mayor Shawn Barigar, who supports Ulukaya. 22 Then came blasts of anti-immigrant hate speech on the Web, and calls on social media to boycott Chobani. This coincided with the 2016 presidential campaign, when Republican candidate Donald Trump took a hard line on immigration that included pledges to prevent Muslims from entering the country because, he warned, they might be terrorists. Eventually, the attacks against Chobani and its founder died out – because, Ulukaya said, no one believed them. And the boycott effort also fizzled because the yogurt was so popular, he said. These days, Ulukaya is focused on an incubator program he has created for young entrepreneurs who want to make and market affordable natural food. Those accepted into the program receive funding for their business plans, office space in New York City and access to a commercial kitchen. They also receive training from Chobani’s leadership team and meet with chefs and other executives throughout the food and beverage industry. The program’s inaugural class graduated in March, successfully producing and marketing products ranging from organic bone broth to cold-pressed juices made from recovered fruit and vegetable trimmings. During the program, the participants managed to make profits from their foods totaling $3 million. Not insignificantly, the program also has reminded Ulukaya just how far he has come in the dozen years since he bought that yogurt factory in upstate New York. “We’ve tried to give them some of the lessons we learned along the way,” he said. “And they’ve brought us back to our early days when we were just getting going.” 23 About the Author

Jonathan Broder is a Washington-based reporter and editor. He was a senior writer for Newsweek, a senior editor at Congressional

Quarterly and served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East for the Chicago Tribune. Broder’s writing also has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Smithsonian and the World Policy Journal, among other publications. He previously reported for Business Researcher on managing corporate crises and workplace safety. Notes

[1] David Gelles, “For Helping Immigrants, Chobani’s Founder Draws Threats,” The New York Times, Oct. 31, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/y7qzbvcu; Pinar Tremblay, “An immigrant himself, Chobani yogurt founder becomes icon for refugees,” Al-Monitor, Oct. 5, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/y7okhwq9. [2] Gelles, Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] “Startup with Heart, Hamdi Ulukaya (Chobani) & Steve Clemons (The Atlantic) @ Startup Grind Global,” YouTube, March 16, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/yb4qdqup. [5] Gelles, op. cit. [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] “Chobani CEO: Giving Refugees Jobs Makes them Part of the Community,” Wall Street Journal Video, Jan. 19, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/ydafke4r. [9] Cristina Alesci, “Greek yogurt billionaire fills his plants with refugees,” CNN Money, Sept. 21, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/y7pggmkt. [10] “Startup with Heart,” op. cit. [11] “60 Minutes features Twin Falls yogurt factory founder (Mirror),” Twin Falls Refugee Library/YouTube, April 7, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/y85o9n6s. [12] “Sales of Chobani in the United States from 2012 to 2016 (in billion U.S. dollars),” Statista, undated, http://tinyurl.com/ycxt6ns5. [13] Gelles, op. cit. [14] Jeanne Sahadi, “Chobani employees get a big surprise from their CEO,” CNNMoney, April 26, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/ya3spxqb. [15] Gelles, op. cit. [16] Ibid. [17] Ibid. [18] Leo Hohmann, “American yogurt tycoon vows to choke U.S. with Muslims,” LiveLeak, Jan. 20, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/ybgdnz9d. [19] Lee Stranahan, “Twin Falls Refugee Rape Special Report: Why Are The Refugees Moving In?” Breitbart, Aug. 10, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/zhl44jw. [20] Michael Patrick Leahy, “TB Spiked 500 Percent in Twin Falls during 2012, as Chobani Yogurt Opened Plant,” Breitbart, Aug. 26, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/j4gryzm. [21] David Montero, “Alex Jones settles Chobani lawsuit and retracts comments about refugees in Twin Falls, Idaho,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lnxjcum. [22] Elizabeth Chuck, “Cobani Founder Gets Threats, Calls for Boycott for Employing Refugees,” NBC News, Nov. 2, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/y9xben77. [23] “Chobani Showcases Inaugural Class of the Chobani Food Incubator at ‘Expo West,’ ” Cision PR Newswire, March 16, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/yd883wpe.

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