Chobani’s CEO said he used to sleep on the factory floor in the early days of the Greek yoghurt company.
Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish billionaire who started Chobani in 2005, said in a Tuesday “Rapid Response” podcast episode that he started his business in the countryside.
“Where I started business is country where the cows are, where the land is, and no bars and no restaurants, nothing,” Ulukaya said. “So you’ll sleep in the factories.”
The company was founded in New Berlin, New York, a small countryside town about 200 miles from New York City.
Ulukaya said in the podcast that in the first five years of the business, he rarely left the factory. He also said that when he built a factory in Idaho, he didn’t leave for six to seven months.
“You’ve got to make those kinds of commitments,” the 53-year-old leader said. “Unless you make those kinds of commitments, especially in a high-growth environment, it will go south really fast.”
Ulukaya is not the only CEO who has spent nights on the factory floor.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has shared about his sleeping habits on numerous occasions.
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Speaking at the Annual Baron Investment Conference in November 2022, Musk said he was living in Tesla’s factories in Fremont and Nevada for three years straight, calling them his “primary residences.”
He said he slept on the floor, which was “damn uncomfortable” and made him “smell like dust.” But he wanted to show his employees that he was not “drinking Mai Tais on a tropical island,” hoping to motivate them to work hard.
He said again in May this year that he was “back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.”
Xiaomi’s CEO and founder, Lei Jun, posted a picture on X in November, showing himself sleeping on a white mattress on the factory floor.
“Good morning! Woke up to the news that 100,000 units of Xiaomi SU7 achieved!” he wrote in the post’s caption.
Representatives for Chobani did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
