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Chobani’s Domestic Success (2007-2011)
Company History
Chobani is a U.S.-based, Greek-Yogurt company that was founded by Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish-American, in 2007. Ulukaya, an ethnic Kurd, grew up on a dairy farm in Turkey has a family heritage in the industry. He moved to the United States in 1994 to learn English, and after attending college in New York, Ulukaya followed the advice of his father and started a feta cheese company in upstate New York. After moderate success, in 2005, Ulukaya purchased a 90-year-old Kraft factory in South Edmeston, New York with a small business loan to start Chobani. With the help of four ex-Kraft employees and a “yogurt-master,” Ulukaya began to …show more content…

Market Entry Strategy
To date, Chobani’s international expansion model has followed a fairly similar process: (1) select a familiar market; (2) partner with an intermediary to gain trial and initial distribution; and, (3) scale up production with foreign direct investment. The markets that Chobani has chosen have all been English-speaking markets, which have a relatively high milk consumption per capita. These countries have so far all been former British colonies, with a shared history, culture, and legal origin as the United States, and which are all members of the WTO.
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Figure 4: Milk Consumption per Capita and World Rank

Finland (Rank 1) and Bulgaria (Rank 50) are shown for comparison purposes.
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Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
European countries have the highest per capita consumption of milk. Out of the top 30 markets for milk consumption per capita, 25 are in Europe, including Great Britain. Of the non-European markets, three out of five are the United States, Canada, and Australia.
After selecting international markets it wants to enter, Chobani identifies and partners with an intermediary grocery chain and focuses testing its product in a concentrated metropolitan market. After successful trial and acceptance into the market, Chobani scales up operations and rolls out nationally by building a manufacturing plant.