Scott M. Curran: Chief Impact Officer wasn't even a real job 20 years ago, but about a decade ago, it became one of the fastest growing roles in business Today it's complicated because the idea that companies should do good has been dragged straight into the political culture wars. Say too much, you get attacked. Say nothing, you get attacked. So a lot of companies are pulling back, hedging, or just hoping nobody notices, at the exact moment when their influence has never been greater. Companies shape what we eat, how we work, what we buy, and increasingly what we believe. That’s real power, and power without intention doesn't stay neutral for very long. So what does it look like when a company actually takes that responsibility seriously and builds it into how it operates? Let's find out by visiting Chobani. 

Welcome to Better Good, the show where you learn how the best do good and how you can too. I'm your host Scott Curran. For 25 years, I've served as a corporate lawyer and in-house general counsel and an advisor to some of the most extraordinary social impact work, expanding the private sector, philanthropy and social enterprises. On this podcast, I talk to the innovators, reimagining how the world does good, bringing you candid and inspiring conversations and practical advice, guidance, and tools you can use in your life and at work. If doing good is something you care about, you're in the right place because the world's biggest problems won't wait, and neither should you.

My guest today is Nishant Roy, Chief Impact Officer of Chobani, a company that started with an SBA loan and a shuttered factory in upstate New York and scaled into the number one yogurt brand in America. Before Chobani, Nishant built a career that sits right at the intersection of business, government, and global impact—from Goldman Sachs to serving as a special advisor at USAID to advising a family office across investments in philanthropy to being a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Nishant has spent his career inside the systems that shape how money moves, how policy gets made, and how impact actually happens. 

But at Chobani, the mandate's bigger than just business itself. It's to prove every day through how the company actually operates, that profit and purpose go together and hold up under pressure. This is a special episode for me because Nishant is one of my closest friends. We met as mid-career professionals who somehow found ourselves as interns at the then brand new Clinton Foundation in 2005. We were surrounded by mostly college students who probably thought he and I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Nishant had already served in the Air Force, including deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. I remember thinking right away that this guy has seen a very different version of the world and is serious about making it better. I learned a lot working with Nishant during that internship, and I gained a friend, colleague, and collaborator for a lifetime.

That internship ended up being a launching pad for both of us. Over the next decade, I stayed with the Clinton Foundation and eventually became general counsel. Nishant went on to build a career across the highest levels of government, finance, and global development, and ultimately landed at Chobani around the same time that I started Beyond Advisers.

Back then, neither of us could have predicted what this path would lead to or him becoming Chief Impact Officer at Chobani, reshaping an entire industry. But in hindsight, it makes perfect sense. Nishant's work shows what it looks like when impact is built into how a business runs, not added later, and what's possible when a business seeks to serve as a true corporate and global citizen.

We recorded this episode of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. So if you hear noise in the background, it's just the sound of people working hard to change the world, just like Nisha does. 

This is Better Good and here's my conversation with Nishant Roy. 

Scott M. Curran: So I feel like one of the coolest things about having a podcast is that I get to book time with people I want to spend more time with in my personal life. So I actually think the greatest part of sitting down with you on this is that I've got you for a full hour and I love being with you. 

Nishant Roy: I love being with you, and I love that we have to use a podcast as an excuse to. Hang out. 

Scott M. Curran: It has been almost 20 full years since we first met as interns together, and we're gonna talk about life and mid-career transitions because your background, your bio, your work, your life has been an incredible adventure. But I wanna go to a part I've never asked you about before, and I don't know the answer to, which is, what is your earliest memory in life when you came to the realization that doing good was something that somebody could do or that somebody was doing, and might be something you could do? 

Nishant Roy: I got, I guess, two initial responses to this. One is very just familial, um, is my grandfather. My family immigrated here in 1979. I was born a few years later and my grandfather was getting social security, because he was much older. And with the little money that he had, he would buy three things. He would buy cigarettes, he would buy alcohol, and he would buy a chocolate bar for me. And I remember he, he only had like a finite number of resources. He would walk, he could barely walk, but he would walk to the store every week to just get m a candy bar because he knew how much joy it brought me. And I had all of my other cousins that were extremely jealous of the fact that I was getting all of the special attention from the most elderly person in the family. And I just remembered like what that felt like. And I said, “Wow, is there a way to actually kind of spread that across other members of the family?” And that was like the first kind of moment in which I felt that being the recipient side of giving, I felt like, if I can do that to more people, we would have a much better world.

The second was fast forward, many years later, I'm in Iraq. When I had joined the military, we deployed to Kirkuk, Iraq. And on Valentine's Day of all days, this young girl comes up to me and she made a valentine and I was protecting, like us and 44 others were protecting her village, uh, within Kirkuk, and she handed me this Valentine and I just looked around and I'm like, “My God, I'm so far away from home.” We barely, we have this big language barrier between the two of us, and I'm looking at the rubble that it, that is just right next to her home. I'm looking at all of these, uh, lack of infrastructure in part of the community, and I'm just thinking to myself, “Could there be an opportunity in which to provide better education, better infrastructure, just better opportunities for many of these families?” And then maybe just, maybe we could be that much more connected as a world, because we have so much common ground. Every parent that I know of wants to just provide better opportunities for their kids. They'll go and do anything to go and make sure that their kid could get the best of food, the best of access to education. They just want better outcomes for, for their families. And so I said, “Could giving be scaled if there was some sort of entity that existed, whether it be the UN or whatever the case may be, that you could have that form of giving that? That could change the world.” 

Scott M. Curran: Those are two incredible stories and we'll, I'm gonna come back to them, but now draw the line between, share for those who may not be as familiar with your background as I am from being that grandson, or the, perhaps even the favorite grandson of a generous grandfather—to where you are today. So you're currently the Chief Impact Officer of Chobani, a brand that people know and love with an incredibly high profile founder. Something else we'll talk about as being a through line and common in your service in mind, uh, working with people with these incredible platforms and visions. Give us the quick bio, the, the, the, how you got from being a kid, um, to where you are today from a CV standpoint. 

Nishant Roy: I wish I could say that all the different steps I took were very calculated and very thoughtful.

Scott M. Curran: But you can only connect the dots looking backwards. 

Nishant Roy: Exactly. You can only connect the dots going backwards. I, I'm now the Chief Impact officer at Chobani and if I rewind the clock all the way back to 2000, uh, joined, enlist in the United States Air Force. You got the opportunity to go and serve the country in Afghanistan and Iraq and number of different bases here stateside. And I got to focus actually on a function called security forces. So it's the light infantry, if you will, of the United States Air Force. I leave the military and I'm not sure what I'm gonna go do. The military actually does just such a fantastic job of giving you all of the support that you actually need when it comes to housing and, the food that you can go and get, um, and just access to just medical resources and whatnot. It's just top tier and I really was leaving that safety net and it was a shock to the system. I come back home here to New York City and I enroll in school at St. John's University, and I hear President Clinton is coming to Pace University and my brother's going there for school and he says, “Hey, you gotta go and listen to him because I know you're a big fan of his.” And he starts talking about how he's gonna set up this found. And I'm over the moon. I'm like hanging onto every word he's saying. And then I look at my brother and I said, “I'm gonna apply for a internship there.” He's like, “Do you know anybody there?” I said, “No, not a, not a single soul. I'm just gonna apply online and we'll see where it goes.”

And at the same time, by the way, I also applied to go intern for Secretary Clinton, now Secretary Clinton. Then Senator Clinton. I got offers at both internships, which is really cool. I didn't know that. Uh, and I. Chose to go work for President Clinton, as you know. I'm glad you did, because that's where we met. And that's where we got to, uh, spend every day for that summer, all 13 weeks of summer. We got to spend every day thinking about earning income, tax credit, domestic policy, and finding ways in which to advance empowering livelihoods.

Scott M. Curran: Supporting small businesses in a rapidly gentrifying Harlem neighborhood. And eating incredible soul food. 

Nishant Roy: Yes. I wasn't sure what I was gonna go do. Was I gonna stay at this foundation because I was in love with the work? Continue to be in love with the work and I ultimately made a decision to go work at Goldman Sachs to learn a lot more about business, and I did that for about three years. I worked in the hedge fund to funds business. A financial crisis happened, and that was an interesting time in which to be a, an investment bank because a lot of senior leadership across all the different banks had. Been. They had left a lot of folks like myself who are analysts yet so low on the totem pole to take on more and more responsibilities.So I learned a great deal from some of the best and brightest people on the planet. 

Worked there for about those three years. Uh, and I get a call from a friend of mine who was leaving the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And he says, “Hey, I'm gonna go become the chief scientist at the US Department of Agriculture and it would be great if you could come and join me and be my special assistant.” And I said, “I don't even know what a special assistant is or what it does. It sounds very administrative, uh, which is great, but I don't really know any about anything with agriculture either other than the commodities that go into hedge funds.” And he said, “Just come and join and learn. Go do some good things for your country.” And I said, “Great.” 

The opportunity to go serve is something that always excites me a great deal. And so I leave Goldman, come and join USDA, and then within five months of me being at USDA, President Obama then nominates my boss, the guy who was the chief scientist, to go run an agency that unfortunately no longer exists called the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, and I didn't know anything about this organization other than my aunt who's in India and is a doctor, works on global health, public programs for USAID. And she was doing it at the time. And so it said, “Hey, I'm, I might be transitioning to this organization.” She's like, “No way. We're gonna be working together.” and so she's a foreign service national. We get a chance to work together on so many cool initiatives, but I ended up working at USAID for about four years.Spent the last year, uh, focused on a little bit of homeland security. Uh, and then I leave government to go join a family office. 

So there was this family that started, uh, time Warner Cable, and they were looking for somebody to manage their money, as well as manage their philanthropy. They were big donors to President Obama, and that's how I got connected to this family in the first place.Uh, go and work with them and out of nowhere, I get a LinkedIn message and it, it's from the people at Chobani. And they said, “Hey, your, your path is quite eclectic, and we would love for you to go come and meet our founder. Would you be open to that?” And I thought to myself, “I don't know what this conversation's all about. Maybe it's a business development opportunity.” Because on the side I was doing some consulting projects for my former boss, Rajiv Shah. 

Scott M. Curran: And he was the one who was leaving the Gates Foundation? Going to US DA, then pivoted over to USAID. You went with him there and who is still now a leader in philanthropy and social impact.

Nishant Roy: Running the Rockefeller Foundation? Yeah, exactly. Yes. And he, he said he had left USAID and he said, “look, I got a number of different projects that are coming my way that I think we can do some really good things together, and it'd it'd be awesome to partner.” So while I was at the family office, I was also doing some of this work. I thought this inbound message on LinkedIn was an opportunity in which to do business development for this new venture that we were doing on the side. 

Scott M. Curran: Little did you know, 

Nishant Roy: Little did I know. Uh, I sit down with the founder, uh, Hamdi Ulukaya, and he starts to describe to me about the world and how he thinks about wanting to change the way our country thinks about access to good food and how he wants to change the playbook on how business operates. 

Scott M. Curran: So it wasn't a yogurt conversation, or a dairy products conversation. It was a conversation about something completely different. 

Nishant Roy: It was a completely philosophical conversation. Yeah, I know nothing about. Consumer product goods, CPG, uh, and I told him that at the very beginning. I said, “What can I offer you that you don't already know? You are the master of CPG. You've taken a brand that started with an SBA loan and has scaled to be even such—it really is an unbelievable American story to start with an SBA loan scale to become the number one yogurt brand in the country. Going from revenues of just a few hundred thousand dollars to billions of dollars. It's just unreal. 

Scott M. Curran: So let's pull on a couple threads that I think are incredibly important for everybody, no matter where they are in their career. Especially important for young people. You and I met each other when we were much younger, about 20 years younger than we are now, and we are in the middle of one of these. And there are so many people who are wondering whether to take a risk, when, where, and how to pivot.Tthe real answer is there is no specific perfect answer. There's a lot of strategies that you can follow, but you've got this through line of service in different sectors, working in high profile opportunities that you may know nothing about, but you've taken this risk. First of all, for anybody listening, wondering whether they should check their LinkedIn messages, I assume you have a simple one word answer for them. 

Nishant Roy: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yes. 

Scott M. Curran: And even if it's an inbound unsolicited, you have no idea. Look at the LinkedIn messages. That's something super tactical and practical that I think a lot of people overlook.

Nishant Roy: By the way, if there's anybody from LinkedIn that is listening to this, we need to talk because you guys have changed my life and I would love more than anything to pay it forward. 

Scott M. Curran: Great, unexpected and completely well earned advertisement for LinkedIn, which by the way, I still think is one of the best, healthiest, most real social platforms for anybody to be on. Um, I also check it and, and, and filter, but I, now I'm wondering which ones I've missed that I've maybe just missed out of hand. I have an answer to this question, but I'm curious what yours is. How do you make the decision about making a pivot? How do you decide when Rajiv Shah calls you and says, “Hey, I'm gonna go to U-S-A-I-D” and you have this insecurity, maybe some imposter syndrome or, or or whatever about like, I don't know anything about agriculture. I haven't worked in government service in this way. I've just been in the military and you're at Goldman Sachs for crying out loud. It doesn't seem like Goldman Sachs to the Department of Agriculture is the most logical leap. What was your mechanism? What was the filter? How did you. Or did you have even just sort of a firewall for deciding when you would say yes or no to something like that?

Nishant Roy: So it was two pieces of advice actually, that I think still I live by today. Okay. Uh, first and foremost, I leave the military massive shock again to, to me in the system. I don't think anywhere I had worked, I can get that level of camaraderie back. And I was really feeling, uh, lonely from that perspective. And coming to the foundation, um, I got to work on a higher purpose again, because the military is not just about guns and glory and those sorts of things, like you really have a culture in which people from all different walks of life are on equal footing and you go through the same level of training. And so you know, when a general walks into the room, the experience that that rank commands, the schools they've gone to, the experiences they've all had. You only can look up to something like that. And when coming into the private sector or coming into the NGO sector in this case, I was missing that level of camaraderie and that level of understanding because you don't have that.

You, you can walk into a room and somebody could be like yourself, who's a lawyer who, uh, has practiced in, in private practice. And you and I are sitting alongside each other and I'm some guy that just came outta the military, but I do have, don't have nearly the level of writing experience, the understanding of the law and understanding of how to problem solve in the way that you did. So while I appreciate that, we were not on equal footing yet. We were, we were almost put into like equal positions. And while it's appreciated, I very much felt out of sorts. I could have stayed at the foundation and worked in a different capacity, or I could have gone off to Goldman Sachs and there was this really amazing opportunity in which I got to sit down with President Clinton and he said, “You know what? You should forget both and you should go to law school.” And I said, “why law school?” And he said, “Because you already have more lived experience than your peers having served in the military and the experiences that you've gone through, but the law school, the, the legal training itself forces you to think outside the box. You get agnostic to emotion. You get, you really are thinking about all the different parameters that go into problem solving.” And so I get that, but I already felt so far behind my peers that had graduated from college, they're earning here in New York City. And here I was coming back and had no formal education. And I only had this lived experience. I'm really eager to go and make some money. And I'd finished my four year degree in two years because I was that eager to go and start making some money. And he is like, “I get that. So why don't I introduce you? to Bob Harrison.”

Bob Harrison, former Goldman partner, uh, at that point was running the Alliance for Healthier Generation, uh, later becomes the CEO of the Clinton Global Initiative, is currently the CEO of the Clinton Foundation. 

Scott M. Curran: And a dear friend and mentor to both of us who we both got to know that summer working in Harlem together.

Nishant Roy: Yes, yes. And he heard the fact pattern of like, here's, here's, I see what drives you Nant, like it's impact. It's doing something much bigger than just yourself and. From that he was very simple. He said “What the public sector and what the NGO sector is missing are folks that understand business, that understand the bottom line.” How do you keep programs sustainable over some period of time? He's given me this advice back in 2006, right? And here we are today preaching this very topic of getting more private sector thoughts and voice into the equation, When we think about all the good that we're trying to ultimately implement on the public sector side.

Scott M. Curran: So you don't feel like you sold out. You, a lot of people would say, oh, pivoting from government service and to philanthropy. And then going into Goldman Sachs to make money is a purely selfish sellout move. And it's not. It was to actually pick up a different skill set credential that would enhance your profile and your ability to make impact. And I wanna be clear, I don't think going into the private sector, I started as a corporate lawyer in the private sector, I don't think there's anything involved in that means you're selling your soul at all. But there's a lot of people who see a pivot from that kind of service-focused work and you know, sort of humble paychecks that, that come with nonprofit work and government service, and a move to Goldman Sachs is a pure effort for cash. And that clearly wasn't it. You were looking for a new credential. 

Nishant Roy: Absolutely. It's, it was to take skills and learn how businesses operate and work, um, and bring that to the public sector. And I think that experience alone really unlocked a, a massive paradigm shift for me in terms of how I thought about how to do good. 

Scott M. Curran: And I've never asked you this, but I have a strong feeling that one of the things that Goldman Sachs was most interested in about having you, there was your government service in the Air Force and your philanthropic service to the foundation.

Nishant Roy: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. 

Scott M. Curran: The symbiotic relationship is actually quite strong. 

Nishant Roy: Oh yeah. They, they don't want just. An engineer, uh, or somebody that's with a, got a computer science background or somebody that studied finance undergrad. They want diversity of thought. They want diversity of problem solving and they want, having somebody that come from the military that you co stick by core values of integrity and service before self and excellence in everything that you do. That means something. Again, going back to that military example of when you see a general walk in the room and you know what experiences they've gone through, you're kind of wearing that credential when you're representing the military and you're walking into a anywhere and you're saying, “Hey, I proudly served in the military.”  People put a value in that, and I think that's what Goldman saw in me. 

Scott M. Curran: So then you make the pivot to government service. So you go from Goldman Sachs to government service and then government service in two major agencies, USAID and then back to the, the private sector, um, with Chobani at, with the consulting gig in, in betwixt. What was the thought process about going into a work for a food company? Or was it just that Hamdi. Articulated an incredible vision and path that you wanted to be a part of? Or was it multiple things? 

Nishant Roy: So, second piece of advice that I got when I was at Goldman. The managing director there named David Simons, he sat me down. David said any job he had ever taken in his life, he followed three simple criteria, which I still adopt today. One, are you working on a mission that's much bigger than maximizing profit or just whatever, whatever they articulate in that organization? Two, are you working with really smart people that you feel like you're learning from because you should always be learning? And, uh, do you also feel like you're adding value to the debate, to the conversations that are happening in those boardrooms? And then the third is, are you being rewarded for your efforts? And that may mean proximity and access to decision making and power. And in the private sector, that may mean simply, are you getting paid right for the work that you do?

So that became my decision criteria. Once I went right back, I went from Goldman Sachs into government. I said, “What's my proximity to get real stuff done? And then how can I solve some of these problems as I, as I grow in my career?” 

Scott M. Curran: You started at Chobani in the chief of staff to Hamdi role? I'm gonna skip to your, your, your progression if I get it right. Correct me if I'm wrong. You then become Chief Communications Officer, and Chief Social Impact Officer? And you are now full-time chief Social Impact Officer, having jettison the other roles or handed them off to other people. Talk through that progression and your time at Chobani, 'cause it's going on how many years?

Nishant Roy: It is eight years. Uh, March next year will be nine. Yeah. 

Scott M. Curran: Is this the longest in one place? 

Nishant Roy: Uh, this is the longest I've ever been in one place. Yeah. Yeah. 

Scott M. Curran: What's kept you there?

Nishant Roy: It, it has hit all three of the criteria. It's a mission that's beyond just getting more yogurt and creamers and oat milk, et cetera on shelves. There's a mission in which to provide bitter access to good quality food, which in this country I didn't really fully appreciate. How challenging our food system actually is and how access to natural food or food with natural ingredients only. That's a real challenge. There's only about. A handful of businesses that are actually doing it today that are generating a billion plus in revenue.

Scott M. Curran: People who aren't as familiar with the Chobani story. Hamdi bought a closed shuttered shutting down yogurt factory in upstate New York that he read about in a mailer that showed up in his mailbox. So yet another vote in favor of not throwing away junk mail or assuming all solicitations in your inbox that you weren't expecting to see are, are in any way, shape or form junk. They may be life changing. He brings it back to life. He tries to compete in the yogurt market where there was no extra space on the yogurt shelf. And the the big companies had it pretty locked up. And so everybody was telling him, this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. And he's like, “Let's do it anyway.” Um, the sort of Richard Branson like, screw it, let's do it. And he gets a small business alone. I, it's a tremendous American success story. Almost nothing I ever hear you talk about has anything to do. I don't think I've ever heard you use the word profit. Or year over year revenue or anything else. But you are in an extremely successful business with an extremely high profile founder that is only experiencing more growth and more opportunity. But you guys never—I know you're profitable—but you never talk about profit. You're always talking about the mission. So if you had to explain what Chobani does on the social impact or, orfor profit plus impact side of things, it's not just selling yogurt in the yogurt aisle or dairy or dairy alternatives or, or cream flavored creamers. It's about a healthier food system, fairness and inclusion in. Who we hire, where we work, what we do, how we produce it. In your supply chain work. I don't wanna get ahead of it, but I have worked wwith you and with the adjacent nonprofit, which I'd also love for you to, to hit on. 

So I want you to do a couple things, one, a little bit more about that sort of blending of profit and purpose. Is it real? And then, and then address the skeptics who, who do exist, who, who are in our lives and, and are people that we know who sometimes look at me and say, “Scott, I'm kind of amazed that you've got this Pollyanna view that any corporate impact is real at all, and that it's not just marketing.” Which crush crushes my soul because I know, and I've, I've had those conversations with you and with Hamdi, and I've, I've heard and seen these stories told, not just at Chobani, but in lots of places. So for those who might be newer to whether or not this is real, explain what it really looks like at Chobani day to day and, and what it really means to be the Chief Impact Officer and whether or not it's really real. 

Nishant Roy: It is so real. And, uh, Chobani, when I got there, just started as only a yogurt business. We are now, today a food business, truly a food business. When Hamdi started in 2005, just five years later, he had generated over a billion or so in sales. Unheard of. That's like tech level growth, right? So amazing in itself as a, as a feat, the business. 

Scott M. Curran: And early on it was Greek yogurt. It wasn't just like regular yogurt that we saw on the shelves. It was Greek yogurt, which is a specialty item. 

Nishant Roy: It is still classified as Greek because of the, the protein and the thickness of it, but. Because of the American consumer, they're, everyone is vectoring towards wanting to get less sugar, more protein in their diets. And that's why consumption of Greek yogurt is actually increased dramatically.

Scott M. Curran: And arguably that is impact alone. And, and that is, that is a better version of a product that makes people healthier. 

Nishant Roy: Get this actually. Chobani in 2005 is not fully incorporated yet, but guess how much sugar is in the average cup of yogurt that's available for sale in the yogurt category: 43 grams of sugar in a single cup. So if, if you're counting at home, think of those like 13 sugar cubes. Uh, and you would pop them all into a single cup of yogurt. That's how much sugar was going inside America's yogurt in 2005. Today, guess how many. Grams of sugar you're seeing in, uh, the average cup of yogurt?16 grams of sugar. I mean, massive decline right from 43 to 16. And the question is, what happened? What happened truly is Chobani's continued to growth. 

So Chobani went from being, say number four in the entire category to quickly becoming number three, then two, and now we're number one. What that means is that it forced all of our biggest competitors, the General Mills, the Danond, et cetera, of the world yo reformulate their products so that they can ultimately reduce the sugar and increase the amount of protein. So it actually was a race, if you will, to get better options for the country. And so talk about impact in itself, just on the product.

Scott M. Curran: On one tiny little metric of, so what else? So I, I, I know that like you could have stopped there and just told the story of a healthier yogurt. Literally becoming taste makers and change makers in that regard. And, and, and elevating in the process awareness, which is, in my view, awareness raising can be a throwaway. And if that's all anybody does, it's probably not the most dynamic, you know, nonprofit or social impact organization or initiative, but it's still worthy. So just knowing how much sugar is in a cup of yogurt that people otherwise generally assume as a healthy food alone can be a win. But that doesn't scratch the surface of what impact means at Chobani. So what else is there in the portfolio of impact, both from the beginning to where we are today?

Nishant Roy: I would just say the entire company truly screams and does impact. And what do, what does that mean? So I mentioned yogurt. The next frontier when you're making yogurt, by the way, two byproducts. One is whey, the other is cream. Cream. You can sell to butter manufacturers and so forth. We saw in the country that about 70% of Americans are consuming oil actually, that they put into their coffees. And we said, “Hey, that's an injustice because the, marketing, the way it's represented, it looks like it's dairy, but it's actually no ounce of dairy at all. So we said with the cream, why don't we go out and make a coffee creamer that can go against the big guys that are already out there. This business for us has grown to be about 2% of the market to today is around 10 to 11% of the market. Um, so it, the American consumers run responding quite favorably to having a better natural option than what they had previously. So that's one another area of disruption. 

The other big area of disruption is on coffee. 90% of Americans consume coffee. Yet, uh, the fastest growing area within coffee is ready to drink coffee. Average amount of sugar inside, ready to drink coffee—those are like your cans or the bottles, et cetera that you pick up—take a guess of how many sugar there's there. 

Scott M. Curran: I'm guessing somewhere along the lines of what was in a cup of, or you're yogurt ly, right?

Nishant Roy: Yes. 45 grams of sugar, uh, that's in a ready to drink coffee. We bought a brand called La Colombe, started in Philadelphia in 94. We have the opportunity to go out and do what we did with yogurt and now disrupt ready to drink coffee. So we have a long way to go, but this is just the early signs. We have the playbook already, uh, but this is the early signs of what we're gonna go do. And that's just on the product side. So now you're asking about what other aspects of impact that exist within Chobani, outside of just the products themselves. What Hamdi says, it's, “It's not a cup of yogurt that's gonna change the world. It's how you make it that will.” And what does that mean?

That means that you think about the three biggest commodities that we buy. It's milk, it's fruit, and now it's coffee. Think about if you're a dairy farmer in the country. And you think about the consumers that we have, the, the dairy farmers previously were, were gonna maximize the amount of output that they're gonna give you, maximize the amount of dairy that they're providing to, uh, all the different yogurt and creamer and other manufacturers out here in the country. We actually went forward and we went to our dairy farmers and we said, “We're gonna pay you a premium if you give us milk that's RBST free. What is RBST? It's a hormone that's injected in cows to help improve the amount of milk yield. And what's fascinating is that it actually created a momentum in which other businesses started demanding the same spec, and they paid that same premium. And now it is the industry norm. There's no premium that's attached to paying the farmer for RBSD free milk. It's part of common practice. What we're experimenting with now is, uh, fruit. 

So fruit, the typical farmer, agnostic of geography, uh, grows a commodity. Let's just pick one. Say strawberries. If you're a farmer in say, Salinas, California, 30 to 40% of what you grow for the fresh market will never make it to the market. So think about that for a second. You're a farmer. Every one of your seedlings that you've planted on the field, you're giving them all the same amount of fertilizer. You're giving them the same amount of water, all the right inputs. You're treating each and every one of them like on equal footing, but only 60% of them were actually gonna give you profit. At the end of the day, the other 40% will never make it to the market. And because of the economics, you won't be able to actually pick 'em and sell them for some other industry, which is waste, which is absolute waste. You have billions and billions of pounds of waste that's in our country's system today. And we said, “Wouldn't it be great if actually we can find a way to support the farmer, find a way that we can get this really fresh fruit.” Because the only thing that's different about it is the way that it looked.The only reason they got rejected was because of the way they looked. 

Scott M. Curran: Aesthetically, just cosmetic fruit isn't, it's all cosmetic. The ugly fruit market. 

Nishant Roy: Exactly. It has nothing to do with quality or food safety or anything like that. It has everything to do with just, it was too big or it's too small. Uh, or it had, uh, shoulders as they call it, like meaning it's, uh, wider at the top. So we're now going to the farmers and we're creating a whole new market in which we're saying, “Hey, farmer, you, this would've been nothing, no value to you and your system. We're gonna give you a new revenue stream that's proven to be well for the farmers that we're working with. It's proven to be good for the environment.” So we've had the World Wildlife Fund actually come across and, uh, look at what we've been doing here with, with this work. And we've been able to reduce water and emissions by 20%, water waste and emissions by 20%. So the farmer's winning, the environment's winning and the customer actually wins. The customer is getting a brighter product, brighter fruit, domestically sourced that we can provide.

Scott M. Curran: And everything that you've just described there. And I wanna talk about employment too. Because I know Chobani has a in incredible track record, and I know there's a nonprofit that, that, that talk talks about the people aspects of all of this. But everything you just described is, is what I understand and I'll ask for you to grade this paper whether I'm correct or not. It's just supply chain innovation, right? This is supply chain, so the farmers are supply suppliers, whether it's the fruit, whether it's the, the milk, et cetera. This is all what most people would call supply chain innovation. Fair? 

Nishant Roy: Absolutely. And, and by the way, not only just innovation in the supply chain, you're actually protecting your supply chain offering, uh, redundancy. So if you're already going to a different fruit prep provider, you have redundancy to kind of support you. It's a business continuity, risk that you're solving for in the process.

Scott M. Curran: Tell us about, or tell listeners who may not be familiar with this part of the story of the Hamdi, Chobani, and intent story. That the human aspects of the people involved going to that first upstate yogurt. Um, facility where I believe when Hamdi arrived, when he was planning to purchase it or having just purchased it, he found the people shutting it down and preparing to hand over the keys to him. Assuming that they were out of, out of work. And he put them to work, I believe, painting, if I recall the story. He said, “Don't go down to the hardware store, get some gallons of paint.” And do I remember correctly that it was red, white, and blue, and which, which ultimately created the original colors for the packaging. Um, that they painted the actual building.

Nishant Roy: I don't know about the colors. Okay. But I do. Yes. The very first action that they had was to paint the, paint the walls, as he said. 

Scott M. Curran: Uh, and his, because he wanted to give them something to do so they could remain employed. He didn't want them to leave.

Nishant Roy: Exactly. Not, and not only just that, it's like this is, you heard, um, William McRaven and he talks about making your bed. Yeah. And the first thing to do in the morning is make your bed because then you've accomplished something. And Hamdi did in his own way of by painting those walls, is that you're gonna return to this factory every single day. And this factory was made in, say, the 1920s or so. Yeah. The, or maybe even earlier than that. But the, um, this factory you're returning to every day, like it's a place of dignity. It should be a place in which you want to go to. And if it has this fresh coat of paint that you're walking to, you're like, okay, I get it. I am here to serve a purpose and I'm not just coming to this like building that has shambles or it looks like it's decrepit or anything like that. It will change the way you behave. It will change the way you're motivated about the work that you do. So very simple act of just painting the walls is like making your bed.

Scott M. Curran: And then from there, he brought the factory back to life. People who were laid off by the company, A large company that was shutting down that yogurt facility. Brought that facility still alive and well and going strong. Right? 

Nishant Roy: Very, very strong. Yes. It's, it's a, it's the backbone of our company, uh, in terms of the yogurt that we produce for the country. If anything, it's actually scaling in size. We're, we're working to get more folks in there, but there's a limitation on how much space we actually have to scale. So that's why we just announced, by the way, a, a $1.2 billion investment in New York, um, probably about 45 minutes away from the existing factory. We were, we are not gonna close the existing plant. If anything, this is something that we need to continue to operate while we add more incremental volume into the system. But getting to your question, you know, the unemployment skyrocketed in that communitym the moment that Craft ultimately abandoned that plant. And Hamdi then hired the first five. They joined his board, uh, and then he scaled to get to the 55. And then he ultimately, whoever wanted a job, uh, came and worked at Chobani in that community. And then we basically got to full employment. It wasn't until you start scaling and we, and you heard the record growth, right? It went from just a couple of hundred thousand dollars in sales to a billion in just five years. He needed to scale the operations quickly. And he found out there was a massive workforce available in the neighboring town called Utica, New York, which is about 45 or so minutes away. And, uh, it was a big refugee population and everyone said, “Hamdi, there's no way that you can get these guys to come and work for you because one, they don't speak the language. Two, it's a 45 minute trip, so how are you gonna get them to and from? And then three, you know, they have no CPG experience. And he said,
“One. I don't, I barely speak English myself, so. That's a non-starter in terms of a reason. We'll get translators if they need 'em. Uh, buses, we can get buses to help them go to and from. And then three, in terms of the technical skills and expertise, like, we'll provide that.” He's like, “I'm not a CPG guy. I was a nomad, uh, that grew up in Turkey. I spent six months in the mountains with shepherds, and then I, I spent six months in the city. I never knew that I would have a factory that was gonna be producing billions and billions of pounds of yogurt, uh, on an annualized basis. These guys can learn it just as much as I can, if not better.” 

Scott M. Curran: I love this theme of learning, hiring for attitude and, and teaching and training for aptitude as you go, which is true both in your story and my story and in the story of those that, that hodi saw opportunity in.

Nishant Roy: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, we scaled, by the way, Scott, to getting about 30% of our workforce at one point in time were immigrants and refugees. 

Scott M. Curran: And what impact does that have on the rest of the workforce, right? Because now this is a true, great melting pot story. This is a true American success story because you have people from rural upstate New York working now with refugees from 45 minutes away who don't speak the same language, which required hiring of translators and, and, and it creates this new sense of community and culture in those spaces, from what I understand. 

Nishant Roy: So immensely powerful. The first off, the level of adversity that many of these refugees have had to face.the amount of vetting that they've had to go through in order just to come here to this country is…unconscionable. Ssome of them have escaped political turmoil. Some of them have escaped because of the environmental reasons some of them have escaped for because of economic turmoil, whatever the case may be. They've had different reasons in which they've come to this country and under this refugee status. But what's fascinating as a social experiment, if you will, is that the community and the workers at Chobani don't actually view them at that title of refugee. They actually view them as people in their community.

So Hamdi's got this line that he says, and it it rings true every day. I hear it, is that the moment a refugee gets a job is the moment that they're no longer a refugee. They just know them to be he coach of the kids' soccer team, they know them to be the barista at their local coffee shop. They know them to be the folks that work at Chobani on the day shift or the night shift or whatever. They're just very much immersed in the family. But the adversity that many of these folks have faced and their families, the community that they've built, that level of resiliency, that level of just education that they now share with the folks that are coming from upstate New York or Central New York. It has opened up their eyes. We now have 19 different languages, 26 nationalities, 19 languages that are spoken in the factory. That, that in itself, it's like the UN up there. It's, it's unbelievable. They're serving one common cause, which is to get better food to more people. And, that is just a massive opportunity to unite folks. 

Scott M. Curran: I was gonna ask you to address the skeptics who say that business. Isn't really doing good, can't really do good, or that they're doing good for ulterior motives, that it's all profit focused. But I, I don't think you, I think everything you've said is the response to that.

Nishant Roy: You could, you could actually totally have both. And as you said, or as I was describing, like with the products, with the way that we hire, the way we make our products, you can obviously have impact there and people will get those stories. You have the supply chain resiliency and so forth. But let's just go to even simpler example. 

If you're in the factory, and you have a piece of equipment, that piece of equipment is rated to go at a certain speed. So in, in the plant, I'm gonna get technical for two seconds. 

Scott M. Curran: Get technical niche, Nishant. 

Nishant Roy: There's a rate called OEE. It's basically, imagine you have a car and your odometer tells you that the maximum speed that you can top out it is like 200 and say 10 miles per hour. At about 180 or so, the governor kicks in because you're, you'll never get to that two 10. The reason I'm telling you about this car is that imagine every day your job is to go on a shift and drive that car from one location to the next location. Uh, say it's 50 miles. If you are operating that car at, say, 60 miles per hour, it's gonna take you far longer to go cover that distance, and you may have to change drivers in the, in the mix. And as you start and start, et cetera, it may require more oil. It may require more fuel, which is why when you're going to buy a car, you hear about the fuel efficiency standards and how it's a little bit higher when it comes to the highway and so forth. 

The reason I'm bringing this analogy up is because in our plants each piece of equipment has a rating of how fast it can go, and every plant across our country has the exact same thing. They have a rating of how fast the, those pieces of equipment can go. If you want to do right by a maximized profit operation, you wanna run that thing to maximum capacity. You wanna run it to 180 miles per hour every single day, so you're getting the greatest level of efficiency out of that piece of equipment. If you are not, that means you're gonna pay more in overtime. It means you're gonna pay more in doing changeovers with those shifts. It means that you're gonna have to pay far more, just in general on maintenance, and you're gonna have a lot of waste in the process and so forth.

Now, that doesn't make a ton of sense from a profitability perspective, but think about the impacts. If you're running a more efficient operation, that means you're using less electricity over time. Less fuel that you would have to put in that car, you're gonna use less overtime. That means that you're paying, uh, less out of your SG and A budget. So this is  a common sense thing that businesses can absolutely implement is like run a more efficient operation, which ultimately leads to less water wastage, less electric wastage, uh, and a more efficient workforce. 

Scott M. Curran: Everybody wins. Nobody loses. Things get better in the process. Consumers are happier. Employees are happier. Markets get better and more efficient. Things work the way we believe they should work. People work together peacefully. Happily producing products that are healthier and people love. I don't know how anybody argues against it. 

Nishant Roy: Profit and purpose right there. Profit and purpose.

Scott M. Curran: It's not just a tagline. Yeah, it's not just marketing. Yeah, it's absolutely real. We have to find ways to work with people that may be different than us, look different than us, speak different than us. Look at the world differently than us. Um, there's so many things about Chobani. That I think about in that context and in our conversations about your work over the past almost decade, um, that has absolutely nothing to do with the product on the shelf. I don't envy your job when it comes to capturing all the ways in which you make impact because you have the blessing of riches in, in that way. 

Nishant Roy: It's an amazing company. It's what's kept me here, you know, for the last eight years going on nine. 

Scott M. Curran: You are in my life, uh, and in your work, a living personification of what doing good means, and you are an example of a, the continuum of better good. My life has been enriched by virtue of having you in it. Um, you came into it during a difficult time in my life when I was losing somebody who was very important to me and I gained you in the process. And thank God I had you for that summer and for every summer since. And every season we've gone through together, it's been awesome and your work has been better at every turn. You are an incredible example of someone who explores what's possible, sees the opportunity, takes the risk, has really good fallback spots like your worst case scenario every time is always a really good one. You share at every turn with everyone you possibly can, how they can learn from what you're doing, which is incredibly selfless. You have always sought out the path that involves better service in the process and the world is better because of you. I think your grandpa would be really proud of you. I know I am. And I'm grateful you're here. And as far as continuing work goes, there's no question we're gonna have to have another one of these conversations. You’re already invited back.

Nishant Roy: We need to.

Scott M. Curran: But thank you for being part of this one, and thank you for being you and for all you do. 

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If you wanna learn more about how you can do more good, better in your life and work, you can also find me on Instagram Reds, LinkedIn, or subscribe to my substack. You can find links to all of these at www.scottmcurran.com. Better Good is a Beyond cCeative production. My executive producers are Kieron Banerji and Aaron Shulman. Production is by Echo Studios in partnership with Palm Tree Island. 

Remember, the world's biggest problems won't wait, and neither should you.