Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya is standing in his company’s industrial-chic test kitchen in lower Manhattan, gleefully doing shots. He’s not drinking alcohol, but something that is, at least for him, another kind of controlled substance: milk.
Yes, the Greek yogurt titan—the man who once milked cows for a living and famously bootstrapped what became a $1.5-billion-in-annual-revenue company by getting America hooked on the creamy, tart, and protein-rich yogurt of his Turkish youth—is sensitive to dairy. Around the time his trademark mop of curly hair began turning salt-and-pepper, Ulukaya realized that he was lactose intolerant and stopped drinking milk. (Yogurt, because of the fermentation process, is easier to digest.) Then, about a year ago, he began stealthily developing his own plant-based alternative.
“Awesome, no?” he says, grabbing an unmarked cardboard carton and pouring himself another small glass of his velvety off-white elixir. Dressed on this September morning in a light-blue denim shirt, dark jeans, and blue sneakers, he downs the glass and sets it on a large wooden table topped with rows of other top-secret products. When I finally taste my sample, it’s creamy and smooth, coating my mouth and finishing without the sort of chalkiness or cloying sweetness that I’ve come to expect of plant-based milks. Ulukaya praises it as “very earthy, very comforting.” Each sip, he says, reminds him of the last slurp he used to find at the bottom of his cereal bowl.
In January, after years of expanding its yogurt portfolio with innovations such as crunchy mix-ins and lower sugar levels, Chobani will debut an entirely new product category, called Chobani Oat. The company is launching four oat drinks—plain, vanilla, chocolate, and plain extra creamy—that approximate milk (although Chobani has strategically chosen not to call them that). There will also be a barista edition for coffee shops, a line of fermented-oat yogurts in flavors such as strawberry-vanilla and blueberry-pomegranate, and mix-in varieties with names like Peach Coconut Crisp.
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