[dimino]

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", but it's a good read if you haven't heard of it: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

[wmblaettler]

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/

[emmelaich]

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.

[ghaff]

>It doesn't taste much different to the existing products, and costs more.

That's pretty typical of branded product. And sometimes the difference is worth it and sometimes not.

The broader thing that I find pretty impressive is how Greek-style (i.e. thicker) yogurt has gone from this thing I could pickup at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods to being the dominant yogurt style at Walmart in just a few years.

[treehau5]

Buyer beware however, I'd say 90% of the stuff out there is rubbish. Like you said it is "greek style" but it's thicker only as a result of adding thickening agents, and a far-cry of actual authentic greek yogurt, Dannon and Yoplait being the biggest offenders. Chobani is close, but I would say Fage is the absolute best.

Greek yogurt should be hardly sweet, extremely tart, and so thick it almost makes you thirsty -- as you can see where I am going, not something that fits the pallet that giant food has crafted for the average american (I.e fill everything with sugar) which is why I think Chobani has beaten Fage in the US, beacause of it's smoother consistency and slightly sweeter taste.

[venomsnake]

It should be slightly sweet - but only from the lactose in the milk.

Anyway for anyone that wants to taste the real deal - take a gallon of milk (produced without antibiotics), boil, wait to cool to 48 C, add starter,wrap in a blanket, wait 1 day, put cloth on a mesh strainer, put the resulting yogurt in the strainer, wait.

DO NOT THROW AWAY the strained liquid - the so called acid whey. When chilled to the point of freezing it is great refreshing drink.

[ido]

Only after easing your description did I realize Greek yogurt is basically labneh.

[ghaff]

I guess I'm not much of a connoisseur of Greek yogurt. Admittedly I eat yogurt now and then, and even make it at home sometimes, but I'm not a huge consumer. But I don't find huge differences which maybe just means I don't actually have much of a taste for authentic versions. When Fage was about the only thing available, I bought it at Trader Joe's. Now I mostly buy Chobani but buy store brands as well.

[awesomerobot]

You'd be shocked by how many employees some silicon valley startups have — and they're not even shipping physical products. 2000 is fairly reasonable for a national food product company.

[djrogers]

How many employees do you think it would take to produce a product that sits on nearly every shelf in 10-20,000 grocery stores across the US?

And how many employees would it take to distribute, market, package, ship, sell, QC, etc?

[6stringmerc]

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 stuff it in an investor's pocket based on short-term mentalities.

[linux_girl]

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.

[justinlardinois]

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

[Retric]

Works out to around ~500,000 yogurts a person which seems very reasonable especially when most of them probably make on the order of 50k or less.

[DanFeldman]

Logistics & Supply chain, QA and inspections, Sales and account operations, marketing, finance, corporate dev/biz dev. And at Chobani's scale, middle management for all of these categories. I can see 2000 people being realistic.

[ghaff]

I'm actually a little surprised they're that small. That's not all that far out of the typical small and medium business (SMB) definition which tops out at 1,000 employees or so and they're a widely recognized brand--albeit within a fairly narrow niche.

(By contrast Proctor and Gamble has about 110,000 employees.)

[erehweb]

To this point, Chobani had quality control issues a couple of years ago. So that's definitely an area that requires some people. And the marketing / PR folks to make it no longer top-of-mind for most people.

[morgante]

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.

[wnevets]

what is the right amount of people for a company with a market share as large as them?

[BinaryIdiot]

I'm surprised you're being downvoted so heavily. I haven't done food manufacturing before but I've looked into it a few times (so I'm far from an expert but I at least know of a thing here and there). 2,000 seems pretty high to me.

I would love to see a breakdown for their employees and what their roles are spread throughout the company. Also how many manufacturing locations they have (I thought it was just one).

[ghaff]

They apparently have two plants [1]. For each of those plants, you'll have management, production workers, loading dock people, QA, mechanics, facilities, etc. The company will have management at various levels, HR, marketing (advertising, promotion, branding, etc.), sales, purchasing, finance (AP, AR, tax, payroll, accounting, etc.), PR, customer support, etc. I don't know how this particular company breaks down but it's surprisingly easy to get to significant headcounts as companies scale.

[1] http://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/news_home/Business_...

[astrange]

It must've taken a big marketing team to invent calling sugar "evaporated cane juice" in the list of ingredients.

[NoGravitas]

Evaporated cane juice should mean a product like panela or rapadura [1] -- a dark brown unrefined (non centrifugal) sugar containing all of the molasses from the original sugar cane. Unfortunately, in the US, there is no legal constraint on how the term is used, and so when you see it on packaging, you should read it as "sugar", or, perhaps more optimistically, "brown sugar".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panela

[rhizome]

Why do you think they're identical?

[overcast]

Hand pressed by organic virgins.

[mattmanser]

Go work for a week in a warehouse or a factory and you'll understand.

[cloudjacker]

Do things that don't scale.

Thats what working capital is for.

[dimino]

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.

[CydeWeys]

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.

[dang]

> 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.

[CydeWeys]

I don't think it's that personal. I've had people point out to me before that my thinking was a bit divorced from reality, and it was really helpful to be told that in no uncertain terms. Actually, some of the very best advice or information that anyone has ever given me. Yes, it was tough to be on the end of a blunt message like that in that moment, but over time I've realized that it was definitely worth it.

The reality of the situation is that there are at least thousands of different large-scale manufacturers worldwide across all possible industries that employ thousands of employees on up each. This is basically the history of the industrial/manufacturing revolution that we're talking about here. This should be common knowledge, and if it's not, the most helpful solution is to go learn more about it. NO OTHER industry is like software engineering, where all it can take is a dozen hackers to yield a billion dollar startup. Reacting in surprise that there exists a single manufacturing company of that scale in employee count, when in fact there are thousands, indicates that yes, you might be in a bubble.

[dang]

Indeed, I have too. But it's a far different operation on the internet, and if you're going to attempt it here, you need to provide clear differentiators from garden-variety personal abrasiveness, which is definitely going to be the default interpretation.

From a community point of view, if there's a nontrivial chance of generating an angry subthread, then the expected value of such a comment is negative. You can change that into a positive by putting more care into how you express your point. It's hard, but doable; there are users here who are good at it.

[BinaryIdiot]

> 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 those 2,000 do :)

> If you think 2,000 employees is a lot, wait until you see how many employees a company like Ford has

Seems like an apples to organges comparison. Ford does R&D on vehicles which include a vast amount of complex parts but they also do manufacturing all across the world, various offices to manage this and work with partners, dealer inspectors, etc. Ford has multiple products that all are incredibly high in complexity next to yogurt.

[potatolicious]

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.

[BinaryIdiot]

> 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).

I get everything you're saying and as I said I am not in the same industry but I've taken cursory looks and 2,000 still seems high to me. But I'm not saying they're doing it wrong and I have to be right, etc; I would just love a breakdown to get an idea for how they manage / use so many employees.

For instance Nabisco has a large factory that has 1,200 employees that handles the making, packaging and shipping out of about 320 million pounds of snack food a year. Granted they're a crazy huge company so not comparable but it shows what 1,200 people can do to some degree in food manufacturing but obviously there are huge differences there. It's hard to find a company of similar market size that I actually know of to compare employee counts.

Do you have any references for employee utilization / counts at various food manufacturers / distributors?