In 1996, Hamdi Ulukaya, a twenty-five-year-old student from Turkey, was attending language school in Troy, New York. He had left home for America two years earlier. One day, his father called and announced plans to visit. In anticipation, Ulukaya shopped for the foods that his father customarily ate for breakfast: bread, olives, and feta cheese. But the only cheese that Ulukaya could find in the local supermarket was flavorless. His father, who was equally unimpressed after sampling it, made a suggestion: why not go into the cheese business and market a really good feta?