YouSaid · the spoken record

Hamdi Ulukaya

lines on the record: 120
first: 2022-11-14
most recent: 2022-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“100% right in a commercially, this cannot be done with a cheeseclot. It needs to be centrifuge separator. And these separators are, you know, I would say close to a million dollars by the time you...”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're questioning me. They're looking at me. He says, Who is this guy? How are we going to? And I can tell the way that they are interacting with me that they're not overly excited, they're not overly drunk with it, but they're cautious. At least they have a job and they're looking at me and saying, what kind of ideas and improvements that he's going to make. So I'm managing that human psychology at the same time while I am not saying I don't have any ideas, but at least I'm not sitting around and doing nothing.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So within that, I have four factory workers that I hired. Actually, the manager who was the plant manager who was closing the factory, I ask him, I said, if one day I wanted to bring this factory back Are the people you would recommend for me to hire? And he recommended, he says, You got to get Maria because he knows all the vendors. You got to get rich because he knows all the production equipment. You have to have Mike Allen. Mike is the guy. The guy knew exactly where the old pipes were, where the lines were, because there was no drawings. This was so old. No one had the blueprints of the plant. So I had to convince my calendar to come back, which I did. And then the wastewater side of things, that was Frank. He knew how to turn that back on. So I had those four people with me in the summer of 2005.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They would buy that thing. That was my data point. And then the second data point for me was, you know, if you meet with people and people ask you where you're from and you say I'm from Turkey, the next thing they say, oh, I was in Turkey or I was in Greece. And within few minutes, the first thing comes up is the yogurt that they had in Greece and Turkey with honey and walnut. And that was one of the best things ever. So there is a disconnect between how people are talking about it and how the market conditions are.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's a little bit of background. I don't know if it's, I mentioned we eat so much yogurt in Turkey, right? Breakfast, lunch, dinner. I mean, you can imagine a meal or time on occasion that you don't somehow consume your goods. But compared to what it was here. Yogurt was ten times worse. It was literally horrible. Like it was awful stuff. And I thought it's milk and culture. There's not cost side of this. It's just milk and culture. It's just knowing how to make it. And I thought people will love it. Why would they not if there is a better yogurt that is made? I thought people will love it. If they're buying this shit, they could buy that stuff. If they're buying that stuff,”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we get their backing, we can come up with a plan. I mean, of course, I have to go look at the plant and look at the equipment and all that kind of stuff. We could make this happen. A small chance, but it's possible Worth pursuant and says, Why don't you make a business plan I'll send you some applications and you fill it, and we can look at this now. I said, business plan, I've never done a business plan. How do you make a business plan? In the last couple of weeks, I put a business plan together, a couple of pages. He helped me how to do it. And then a few weeks later, we went to, a few days later, we went to the plant and see it. And we kept in contact with the real estate agent. To make the story short,”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am in my office maybe a few weeks after. I have this Regional bank is called Keybank. You know, they're salespeople, they go from business to businesses in the communities and say, What can we do? Do you need anything, you know how they are? And there's these two gendermen shows up. One is named is Pat Mucci. And then he has another person next to him. His name is John Ryder. And I said, Pat, I just went to this place and I saw this yogurt factory. Selling it for $700,000, and you know, I call Mario. Mario thinks it's a stupid idea, but I thought, you know, if I get this place, I could make some really cool yogurt out of this place. And I kept talking about it. And he says, Handi, you know, we are partnered with SBA, Small Business Administration”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You will never have $700,000. And if anything, you haven't paid me in the last six months. I have bills. It just basically said it was true. I had not. So I said, you just made it. I know it's been painful for the last two years. You just can't breathe now. Don't do this to yourself. I know you get excited about things, but just breathe”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Makes no sense. Very fair question. And I said, no, no, they don't make good yogurt. I can't make good yogurt. And, you know, I know how to make good yogurt in Turkey. And people love it. I've seen it in New York and all that kind of stuff. And he said, 700,000, right? I said, yeah, it's cheap, 700. I said, you don't have 700,000 dollars.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Getting out of your good business They're close in the factory Who the F are you think that you can make something out of this?”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything is old. The biggest important things that the real estate agents keep telling me is that it is as is. We don't take any liability of anything. So you buy it. It's all as is. You can't come back and say, Oh, this doesn't work, that doesn't. Whatever the things that you find is good and bad, it's all yours. And I left that place after a couple of hours. And then when I left, I called Mario Papa, who was my attorney in Johnstown. And I call him up and said, Mario, I find this place I didn't think that I would be interested walking in, but now I just left. It's a really amazing place. It's got everything. I can make yogurt there and I want to buy it I'm just like, you know, when you see something, you just Tell me what you think. Who owns the company? Who's closing it? What kind of place? And the guy said, Honey.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were not only losing jobs, they're losing a place has been there for seventy years it was a sign of life, really. That steam came out of that place and A sign of life. Everybody's grandfather worked there, mother worked there, father worked there. It was just walking in that plant was walking in a cemetery. It was that kind of...”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's basically the last week of the plant. All employees are 55 people in the last six months. They're just, I guess, closing down, slowly bringing down, shutting things off. I am not seeing the buildings anymore. I am seeing, I am reminding this sad feelings that only would come to our time where I grew up if somebody died in the Euphrates River. And for months, for weeks, like there was this heavy feeling all over the town, like people.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was enough interesting. So I said, Can I come and see it tomorrow? And I picked one of the guy from the plant who was working in the production. And it took us two and a half hours to find it. It was just back roads and country roads. It's not like next to the highway. I saw it from the distance This old place is I get there, and you go up, and then someone named Rick Lake, Rich Lake, says, Hi, I'm the production manager. The plant manager is not here. I was told to give you a tour. He takes me to the plant, and it's basically every time he goes to places, he turns the lights on. It's not a working factory anymore. It was until maybe four months ago, five months ago.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because I know pretty much what things cost. From the experience of putting a smaller version into our plants. It's 20,000 square feet. This one says 67,000 square feet, so it's three times bigger.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I called the person answered and said. This is a yogurt factory. It's an old one, it's craft, and they closed it. And they are selling it as is. And I asked the price. I said, What's the price? He says, $700,000.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I come to this one and I open the envelope. I don't know where it comes from, of course. It's interesting. I open it, I look at it. It's literally an ad. It says fully equipped yogurt plant for sale. And you can tell that it's really, really old. I mean, the picture also says 1920. You can tell it's an old. And of course, you know, no interest. So just like the other ones that I don't remember what it was, I throw them into the garbage. I continue. And you're going through like 20, 30 minutes. And I still don't know why. I went back to that garbage and I picked up that page. Now my three remaining is in there, my cigarette that it was. Put it into the teacup that is also in there. And I look at that picture again and I'm staring at it, and there's a big number on top that it turns out that it's a real estate agent from Utica.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's the thing I am really a messy person. Even today, I'm pretty messy in my office and my desk. Maybe a month, maybe every couple of weeks, I decide that I'm going to organize my desk. I'm just going to go through all the documents, all the papers, all the letters. And you open the envelope, sometimes you don't even open the envelope. You look at the, what is it coming from and you know this is somebody's trying to sell cars, somebody trying to sell mortgage, somebody tried to sell credit card, whatever that is, you know those junk mails and you just tear them off and put them in there. And every once in a while you see an interesting envelope.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't think that this would make me rich or you would get rich out of this. All I wanted to do is survive. And two years, 2004, you get it, you say, okay, I think I survived. I think I survived. Middle of 2004, I felt like I could breathe”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I realized that I'm not going to be able to sell. Feta amounted to pay all my expenses in this place to one person or two persons or five persons. I have to get it as much as I can. So that means that. Between Boston or New Hampshire or Maine to all the way down to Florida and eastwise maybe Detroit and Chicago find all these small distributors that would buy one or two pallets a month. I slept on the roads with the van and meet all these amazing small distributors, family own smell distributors. And I end up getting them hundreds of them”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every day. Every day. I don't have resources. I don't know the knowledge. I don't have experience. I'm new to the country. I got myself into this. I'm already not complete since my mother's dad. I mean, it's a lot of emotions And I remember there was a little creek next to the plant, and I will go there and I will cry and cry and cry by myself. And then I will come up after I'm done inside the factory and start making cheese. But it was that two years. Made me who I am today, but also it was one of the most difficult times of my life.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was literally most difficult times of my life. And I have gone through some difficult time before that. But this was really, really hard. There was no way I could survive. There's no way this could make to the other side. There's no way. Every day this business was going to die”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I read something you said. You said that the years, those two years from two thousand two when you started the factory Euphrates in two thousand four, it's the first two years you said was the most difficult time of my life.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first eye opening for me was I call this distributor another Syracuse. I says, can I come and show you some feather? I said, sure, come. And I go and I show him. He says, okay, I'll buy it from you. And I'm like, wow, you know, I feel like. This is cool. I said, how much you buy? Two palettes A week now every other month. Palette every other month is not enough. Fraction of it's Basically, so how many of these people I have to have Be able to even pay for my expenses. It is at this point I'm saying, what an F I did now. Like what I got myself into.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but soon enough I'd realize that this is not This is not a huge Martian thing You know, you have large manufacturers, even though their product is pretty awful. Have these large manufacturers out of Wisconsin that make millions of pounds. It all around the country Look at the diners, the quality is not the number one thing, really. I mean, it is, but it's not. You said, yeah, he says, I get it, but I put onions in there and I put”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's to go places, right? So These diners, one of the most popular things that even comes even without your ordering is the Greek salad. And that Greek salad has”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's I start looking at Greek distributors now because now I'm really making feta, like really feta. This is not a table cheese anymore. It's a salad cheese. It's a cheese that they put on their Greek salad, right? So who are the buyers of this cheese? Are the Greek distributors? And what they do is they deliver to diners. These diners are all over the...”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“12 people, yeah. I'm making the cheese, I'm packing it, I'm salting it, I'm putting in the pails, you know, 10 pound pails or 20 pound pails, whatever it is.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now we made cheese with unpasteurized milk. Now you're pasteurizing, and so you have to fine-tune that and you're relying on culture companies, you're relying on equipment companies to be able to make that kind of adjustments. So there's a lot of trial and error. We couldn't do any of those things until we had the VATs in place.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the milk is different, right? And then you make the cheese, and then how it stays after two months or a month or two weeks. The texture is not right. I mean, it's close, but it's not perfect.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I, you know, in theory, it should have worked. You know, you have the milk You have the culture, and it should work. I had one of the worst time making the cheese. You know, it turns out the theory and the reality is two different things.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That they will land to the local businesses to start their business or expand their business. And if it goes wrong, then the risk is 90% removed. They set up the meeting with a gentleman out of Syracuse of the USDA, and he came and met with us. And then we heard back after, I don't know how long, a month or two, that we were given 90% guarantee or the banks was given 90% guarantee. It was mind-blowing. So that basically took care of that part. All I had to worry about is the 10% working capital and all the unthinkables.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do I afford to bring the Vets? Vet is this stainless steel vessel, let's say 2,000 pounds, they can go 10,000 pounds, where you pasteurize the milk. It's like, how do I afford to these equipments? And there was a local bank called MBT in Johnstown. The gentleman there said, you know, Can get the USDA to have a loan guarantee, meaning Gives some kind of comfort to the banks, I guess that's the way to put it in place.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was another idea of my father of saying, you know, this importing thing is with the currency going up and down and all the things that are happening. And it's not a very hard cheese to make. And you can even make it with the cow's milk. Why don't you find a place where you can make this cheese here? There were domestic fata be made here. The problem was it was horrible, like literally awful. It was so bad and say, okay, people are buying this stuff. So if you make it a little bit better, you know, it's endless. So, this is no brainer. The question is okay, where do you make it? How do you make it? What kind of environment? What kind of place? How do you put this together?”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So she was my backbone. She was everything that I was. And now she was gone. So it was very, very massive event. And it was extremely difficult to Really stand up and get out of the bed for a long, long time.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just the But then my mother got sick And I went to Turkey And I came back with my mom, discovered that my mom had a very severe liver disease that we had no idea that she had it. And then six months after she passed, I had this time of being again feeling like numb. It was this time of total loss. She was the most important person ever been in my life. And she was the most important person in the family. My father was a big shot and all that kind of stuff, but really it was my mother. The reason that I was in New York City that she made me to be that person to be independent and come here and of course my God, the love that she had and caring that she had. And she made us, I can speak of my own, she made you feel like you were the most special person in the whole universe and made sure that you believed in it.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely cooler. Yeah, definitely cooler. It has to be refrigerated. And we made really good money on importing that cheese. This compared to working here and there, right? So we don't have a lot of expenses.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I called and I went to visit with him. So at that time, I got some samples and stuff from back home, my brother sent it to me. And I went to visit and I said, We make this cheese, which would be interesting. Buying it. I says, Well, you have to know the law, it has to be 100% ship milk, otherwise it will be exposed to duty, it will be too expensive. All these worries and questions, but the answer was yes, I will consider it. And that was the beginning of my business journey. Until that moment, I had never been involved with business.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he tastes it and he says, This is really bad. Is there anything good? I said, No, this is it, what we can find. And he said, wow, why don't you ask your brothers to send you feather cheese? And you can sell it here. That was the big idea. So I got to work And found an Armenian distributors who carried Middle Eastern products based in Queens.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This simple way of putting it in is my mother sends him to say, Go check them out and see what they're doing And then he comes, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. I don't know. But one thing is for sure, we have to work. We have to make some kind of income. And he said... Seems like there's not good feather cheese in here”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the last six months, my brother, my younger brother came and joined me. Not much friends. Every day farmers I interacted with farmers and really I think I get to know America really well because I moved up there. And I got to interact with farmers. I got to interact with residents, real people. Not in New York, really, you have people from all over the world, right? So you have Turks and everybody. Up there, you know, I was probably the first person from Turkey that I've ever seen”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every day. Every day I drive. And then I would do it five o'clock in the morning milking. And then when I come back from the school, the first thing at 6 o'clock, I would do again same thing, milk the cows and all that kind of stuff.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly how you describe this kid from the Kurdish kid from eastern part of Turkey living in a part. And what do I do? So I wake up five o'clock in the morning I gathered the cows and I put them on the lined up. I milk them, I clean everything, I feed them, I water them, make sure that the calves are fed. And then I will drive 60 miles to Albany to go to school in Albany, continue to learn English.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think they could pay me. But I could live and help, right? So that's kind of. How it could, and until I get a job, or I move out and all that stuff, but it ends up being that I lived in that farm for a year and a half.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. When I came back, I made my mind there is no No way I'm living in the city. I'm moving somewhere up there. Definitely, because now I know a place like that exists.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So she was offering you to go move up there. And by the way, I'm just assuming that when you got there, because your assumption was there were no farms in New York, but when you got there, it kind of took you back to where you grew up, right? Because you're like, oh, all of a sudden I'm around farms and animals and Oats and sheep and cheese.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We made it from the goat's milk, which is the closest to shipment that I grew up with. And in the evening, they made sandwiches, they made fire and we sit around the fire, which is, you know, that's what we used to do when we were up in the mountains. I had the best time. And the end of the second day, as I was getting ready to go to the bus station, I said, what would it take in that line? I don't know how I said it, for me to stay in the farm and work in the farm and go to school from here. I don't know what she exactly said. I think there were some... Issues with it But in a month or two months later, she said, You know, if you still want, you can come and stay in the farm.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was a simple farm, and that they were professionals, husband and wife, one in teacher and one was engineer. And they wanted to have a farm.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And actually, the part that shocked me that in New York there was farms. I mean, I never even imagined that there were farms or the animals. I mean, I thought that was in our part of the world. I never thought about it. So I was having a hard time and I can't wait for the weekend to come. She tells me which bus to take and where she's going to pick me up. And she wrote down everything. If I get lost, so I can ask people and she put numbers. And she picked me up from the bus station in Albany. And then from the Albany bus station is another hour drive to the border of Vermont, you know, this beautiful. I mean, as I'm going, I'm just, I can't believe what I'm seeing in these hills and the mountains. I feel like I'm back home”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do you make something? So with the help of someone in that place where I was living, I tried to write how to make cheese. Then a week after this amazing lady teacher, she comes to me with a paper in her hand and tries to tell me with a very Passionate voice. I don't know if she's angry at me with what I wrote or if she's trying to tell me something. I don't understand. So I brought another Turkish student from the other class and asked him to tell me what she was trying to tell me. So it turns out she had a farm in upstate New York. She had goats and cows. And she loved my paper, and she was inviting me to her farm for a weekend so we can make some cheese together.”
2022-11-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT