The Good Food CFO podcast · The Good Food CFO

BABOYOT with Ilay Karateke of Bezi: Data-Driven Strategy Over VC Dollars

·1 hr·3 clips

Eli would rather have 100 stores selling fast than 4,000 weak doors.

1. The Good Food CFO Podcast episode centers on Bezi, the labneh brand co-founded by Eli and Hassan, and on how Sarah Delavan frames its growth strategy. 2. Sarah Delavan hosts the conversation, Chelsea Steer produces the show, and Eli speaks as Bezi’s co-founder and CEO, while Hassan is named as Eli’s co-founder from a Turkish dairy family. 3. The episode asks what building a refrigerated dairy brand looks like when the founders choose data, store-level control, and cash flow over fast national expansion. 4. Eli says her background is McKinsey, followed by Columbia Business School in New York, which gave her two years to explore something outside consulting. 5. During that window, she worked at a farm, milked cows and sheep, and learned to make cheese from scratch as a summer internship. 6. Eli says she later returned to McKinsey as an engagement manager before moving to Getter, a Turkish scale-up that delivered groceries in about 15 minutes. 7. At Getter, she held roles in transformation, marketing, and merchandising, which she describes as a way to get closer to building and owning a business. 8. Eli says she met Hassan at Getter through a leadership conference, and their shared interest in cheese led to them working together. 9. She explains that Bezi began in September 2023, with recipe development in her kitchen and a launch in September 2024. 10. Eli says the product is not Turkish labneh as made in Turkey, because Bezi’s flavors and branding were built for an American market. 11. She says Bezi uses a factory in Turkey tied to Hassan’s family company, with around 200 tons of labneh production capacity per month. 12. Eli says that structure matters because the brand needs vertical integration between production and branding to create a new category. 13. She explains that Bezi skipped DTC because a refrigerated $6.49 product would not make sense with overnight shipping costs. 14. Eli also says she does not want to build a brand around occasional web orders or influencer-driven direct sales. 15. She says the brand’s home is grocery, where shoppers can discover Bezi near products like Sabra and buy it repeatedly. 16. Eli describes testing grocery placement carefully, avoiding bodegas and favoring stores such as Citarella, Eataly, Balducci’s, Westside Market, and Brooklyn Fare. 17. She says a deep-Brooklyn test failed, which reinforced her view that store context and aisle context change how the product performs. 18. Eli says Bezi currently focuses on New York and San Francisco, is adding Ohio and Texas as tests, and plans to learn each state one at a time. 19. The conversation has an interview style that is detailed, practical, and repetitive in a deliberate way, with Sarah pushing for concrete examples and Eli returning to the same strategic principles. 20. Founders who care about retail execution and cash flow will likely find this episode useful, while listeners seeking broad CPG hype or rapid scale may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at scaling carefully, with cash flow and market learning ahead of hype.

A founder led food brand sits at the center of this conversation, but the useful thread is simpler: growth only matters if it teaches something real. The founder's San Francisco approach is sober and practical. Learn the aisles. Learn the zip codes.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a founder's-eye view of a food brand testing growth one market at a time.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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