Chobani gives its 2,000 employees shares worth up to 10% of the company

By 2016 Chobani had grown from a defunct Kraft plant in upstate New York into a Greek-yogurt maker with $1 billion in annual sales, 2,000 employees — about a third of them refugees — and an estimated $3 billion value. Founder Hamdi Ulukaya, still the majority owner, wanted the people who built it to own part of it.

Hand every full-time worker — factory floor included — real company shares, sized by role and tenure, together worth up to 10% of the firm.

On April 26, 2016, Ulukaya gathered workers at the New Berlin plant and announced that every full-time employee would receive Chobani shares. He personally set each grant based on role and tenure; together they could total about 10 percent of the company.

At a $3 billion valuation, the grants meant some long-tenured workers could become millionaires if Chobani sold or went public. The move became the flagship modern example of broad-based employee ownership in a non-tech company.

Chobani's rise was improbable: in 2005 Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish-Kurdish immigrant whose dairy experience was his mother's strained yogurt, bought a shuttered Kraft plant in New Berlin, New York. A decade later the company had two factories, 2,000 employees and $1 billion in annual sales.

In April 2016 Ulukaya told the whole workforce they were getting shares — grants, not options to buy — that together could reach about 10 percent of the company. He decided each award himself, by role and tenure, telling workers: 'We used to work together; now we are partners.'

The announcement landed as a near-total surprise and instantly entered the canon of employee-ownership stories, alongside ESOPs and tech stock grants — but unusual because it covered factory workers in a food company, a third of them resettled refugees.

The grant covered everyone full-time, not just executives or engineers, which is what made it a story.

Sizing by role and tenure rewarded the people who had built the company longest.

It cost Ulukaya control of real value, which gave the gesture credibility no bonus program could match.

A large refugee workforce made the ownership stake read as a statement about who gets to share in a company's upside.

Equity says what speeches can't: the people who built the company own it. Grants sized by role and tenure turn a one-time gift into a retention engine.

When Chobani filed for a Nasdaq IPO in November 2021 under the ticker CHO, the SEC filing showed employee shares from the 2016 plan and a 2020 follow-up had grown into a 12.5 percent aggregate stake, held as Class B units on employees' behalf. By then Chobani was the top-selling yogurt maker in the U.S., with $1.4 billion in 2020 sales.