For Chobani Inc. May might as well be national yogurt month.
Not only did the Greek-yogurt maker announce its first-time sponsorship of Team USA athletes during the London 2012 Olympics, it learned that Chobani is rated as the top yogurt brand in the U.S., according to Harris Interactive's 2012 Harris Poll EquiTrend study. Then, this week, the Small Business Administration named the company as its 2012 Entrepreneurial Success award winner.
Here's why the accolades have been flowing in. After launching in 2007 out of a shuttered Kraft plant, the company — which started with five employees let go from Kraft — now has more than 1,200 employees. Chobani, based in New Berlin, N.Y., also has roughly $1 billion in annual sales and ships 1.5 to 1.7 million cases of Chobani to grocery stores across the U.S. each week.
Named for the Greek word for shepherd, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya sat down with Entrepreneur.com to talk about the company's modest beginnings and growing pains as it breaks ground at a new, nearly 1 million-square-foot manufacturing plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. Here is an edited version of that discussion:
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