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At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

nytimes.com

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Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#41

Post by morgante »

dimino wrote: post #4

Congrats, but I'm always blown away at the size of some companies. Do you really need 2000 people to make yogurt? Airplanes are big complex systems, so I get that, but yogurt? Edit: Apparently I rubbed some folks the wrong way. I didn't mean to think I could do better, I just meant it's a wild thought that something so "simple" as yogurt could require so many people to make. You guys probably know about "I, Pencil",…

I'm sorry you're getting downvoted and I think it's undeserved.

You asked an admittedly ignorant question, but it was somewhat interesting. It's a nice reminder that most of our economy still does depend heavily on the labor of many humans.

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#42

Post by potatolicious »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #32
CydeWeys wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just surprised that you're surprised that a large number of people are involved in the manufacturing and distribution of a physical good. If you think 2,000 employees is a lot, wait until you see how many employees a company like Ford has. I think your mind is a little bit stuck in the SF bubble.

> a large number of people are involved in the manufacturing and distribution of a physical good. Manufacturing per product is typically limited to few locations (likely 1 location for this company as far as I can tell). Yeah it's a lot of work but I'm curious as to what their make-up is as far as employees go. Reading up on a lot of logistics it seems like they could get away with 1,000 so I'm curious as to what tho…

Yogurt (or any manufactured food product, really) is surprisingly high in complexity...

I'll echo the GP post - I'm a bit surprised at the amount of surprise. Maybe we need to be doing a better job of educating people about these things (or conversely, maybe we need to do a better job of sticking our heads outside our respective bubbles).

Obviously cars and yogurt are not directly comparable, but I'd wager they have similar dimensions of complexity - you have a lot of raw material provided by a lot of different vendors, all of which need to be managed and their output verified aggressively. Ford for example outsources the bulk of the parts for their vehicles, both R&D and manufacturing, and has to manage these same vendor relationships.

You have a lot of logistics when it comes to bringing a lot of different inputs together.

And then you have complex, precise manufacturing processes that not only have to be highly productive but also highly safe. There's a lot of human labor involved when it comes to compliance and safety, not to mention simply operating factories.

And then you have a lot of complexity in logistics to get the product to your customers - arguably Chobani is substantially more complex than any car company here, since there's a wider array and number of retailers than there are dealerships - and the relationship between supermarkets and manufacturer is more distant and harder to control than between dealerships and car brands.

All of this before we get into the administrative side of the company: marketing, sales, etc.

I'm surprised they can do it with as few as 2000 people.

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#43

Post by dang »

CydeWeys wrote: post #22
dimino wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "hire many people" one of the things that falls under "things that don't scale"? I kind of thought that meant more like the opposite. In any event, I wasn't maligning Chobani, just expressing my surprise.

I'm just surprised that you're surprised that a large number of people are involved in the manufacturing and distribution of a physical good. If you think 2,000 employees is a lot, wait until you see how many employees a company like Ford has. I think your mind is a little bit stuck in the SF bubble.

> I think your mind is a little bit stuck in the SF bubble.

I'm sure you meant no harm, but please don't make unfounded personal comments like that. They have a high probability of being taken ill and provoking defensive reactions. And they add no information, except perhaps information about the commenter's assumptions.

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#44

Post by maxxxxx »

morgante wrote: post #40
mjfern wrote: post #31

It's great to see a founder CEO (Hamdi Ulukaya) making a bold ethical move like this to support his employees. It's not flashy or earth shaking, but it's very real and it will definitely change many lives for the better. This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. Once HP recovered, I…

> This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. It mystifies me that cutting pay instead of getting rid of deadweight is seen as noble or honorable. If I were working at HP, I would have quit the second they decided to cut my pay just so they could avoid needed firings.

For some people and at certain times it's not that easy to find a good job immediately after quitting. If this had happened in 2001 good luck finding a job!

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#45

Post by emmelaich »

wmblaettler wrote: post #19
dimino wrote: post #4

Congrats, but I'm always blown away at the size of some companies. Do you really need 2000 people to make yogurt? Airplanes are big complex systems, so I get that, but yogurt? Edit: Apparently I rubbed some folks the wrong way. I didn't mean to think I could do better, I just meant it's a wild thought that something so "simple" as yogurt could require so many people to make. You guys probably know about "I, Pencil",…

Chobani is in several global markets and has multiple large-scale plants. 80% of their workforce are plant floor workers. I know this as I helped build an enterprise social platform for them a few years ago with a partner agency. [1] [1] http://www.bigspaceship.com/case-study/chobani-home/

Yes, in Australia we have a very good dairy industry (milk, cheese, yoghurt ...) and I was surprised to see lots of Chobani on the shelf. We already had about four local and NZ manufacturers of yoghurt, including 'traditional' or 'Greek style'.

I wonder if it's a bubble or whether they can compete. It doesn't taste much different to the existing products, and costs more.

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#46

Post by justinlardinois »

linux_girl wrote: post #27
6stringmerc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, when I saw my company had The Blue Man Group on the books as a client and they employed ~400 people I was quite surprised. Then I got to thinking about the operation, the numerous business avenues of rights management, the touring, and then it started to make sense. Personally I'd rather work for a company that can afford to expand along with demand and maintain quality rather than siphon off cash and stuf…

Blue Man group is really a "franchise" operation. There are at least 12 productions going on around the world, and even on cruise ships! Because the men are "blue", they are interchangeable, too.

So you're saying there could be Blue Men walking among us and we wouldn't even know?

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#47

Post by jagtesh »

morgante wrote: post #40
mjfern wrote: post #31

It's great to see a founder CEO (Hamdi Ulukaya) making a bold ethical move like this to support his employees. It's not flashy or earth shaking, but it's very real and it will definitely change many lives for the better. This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. Once HP recovered, I…

> This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. It mystifies me that cutting pay instead of getting rid of deadweight is seen as noble or honorable. If I were working at HP, I would have quit the second they decided to cut my pay just so they could avoid needed firings.

I think the key here is motivation. When cost cutting is the motivation, managers are told to remove X number of people from the department, even if they all perform their jobs well. This is more common than you think.

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#48

Post by mooreds »

morgante wrote: post #40
mjfern wrote: post #31

It's great to see a founder CEO (Hamdi Ulukaya) making a bold ethical move like this to support his employees. It's not flashy or earth shaking, but it's very real and it will definitely change many lives for the better. This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. Once HP recovered, I…

> This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. It mystifies me that cutting pay instead of getting rid of deadweight is seen as noble or honorable. If I were working at HP, I would have quit the second they decided to cut my pay just so they could avoid needed firings.

> If I were working at HP, I would have quit the second they decided to cut my pay just so they could avoid needed firings.

I sympathize with your viewpoint, but I think it depends on whether you see dead weight. If you are on a great team with no dead weight, a pay cut to keep everyone together would be far more palatable.

Re: At Chobani, Now It’s Not Just the Yogurt That’s Rich

#50

Post by SilasX »

morgante wrote: post #40
mjfern wrote: post #31

It's great to see a founder CEO (Hamdi Ulukaya) making a bold ethical move like this to support his employees. It's not flashy or earth shaking, but it's very real and it will definitely change many lives for the better. This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. Once HP recovered, I…

> This story reminds me tangentially of the time when Hewlett and Packard, when faced with a downturn at HP, decided to cut pay across the board so the company could avoid layoffs. It mystifies me that cutting pay instead of getting rid of deadweight is seen as noble or honorable. If I were working at HP, I would have quit the second they decided to cut my pay just so they could avoid needed firings.

I strongly suspect that they did experience this sort of "evaporative cooling" of workforce quality when they made that decision (or quietly reversed the paycut with targeted "raises").

Ditto for GM when they offered all union employees the same (formula for) buyout from their contracts -- the best ones take it and leave because they'd get the money and the new job; the poor performers know they can't last anywhere else and stay on.

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