Yaza: Big Mediterranean Flavor, Zero Fuss. That's Yaza.
For the 264th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Yaza and Founder, Christian Karim Khalil. Yaza brings bold Mediterranean flavor to everyday snacking — without the fuss. Inspired by time-honored recipes and crafted with simple, real ingredients, our dips and spreads turn ordinary moments into something crave-worthy. From creamy labneh to nutty Muhammara, we make it easy to enjoy big, authentic flavor at home, at work, or anywhere you snack. Mediterranean made easy — because great taste should never be complicated.
"Together Talks" feature 264: Yaza presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What separates you from your competition? What have been the biggest challenges? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur? What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
We started a Mediterranean dips company, and kind of looking at the market, we saw the white space where no one was meeting the growing demand for the Mediterranean diet that we were seeing at the restaurant level.
On the grocery side, that was not translated properly in grocery stores. No one was doing the right authentic taste, the right flavors, and the right diversity of what you would find in a restaurant.
Everyone was kind of focusing on hummus. Hummus was growing and doing well, but everything else was kind of left out. So we saw the space to come in and help consumers add Mediterranean flavors to their everyday bites using Yaza.
What separates you from your competition?
Overall, our competition is whoever is fighting for the same shelf space, right? When you
compete in a retail space, the shelves are limited. It's not like DTC, where there is unlimited
space. In the grocery shelf, there are maximum facings that the grocery store can give you.
So we compete with every brand, from hummus to guacamole to salsa, trying to attack the shelf.
That's kind of our overall competition on the retail level.
When it comes to consumers, it's a different competition. We don't compete with hummus there; we complement hummus because we give something extra. Consumers are still buying Yaza, and they're buying hummus, which is good to have.
We've seen a lot of new brands and old legacy brands introducing labneh. We're the number one labneh in the market, both natural and conventional, and the fastest-growing in the category — but we've seen a lot of new brands trying to flood the market and enter the category.
The good thing for us is we've been growing really fast, and we're kind of closing that barrier to entry because the grocery shelf is limited. Because shelf space is limited, retailers can afford to be selective — and that works in our favor when the product performs. And on top of that, it just tastes better, which is what actually keeps people coming back.
So it comes down to product, taste, packaging, and being first to market — and we've worked hard to get all four right.
We've seen the other brands come in, but they're having difficulty. Some of them leverage, the relationships that they have. We're a new company with three years in the market. Their companies have been there for 20 years and have stronger relationships, so we've seen some of that as well.
The thing is, being the first to market is the most stressful. It's like when you're doing a marathon race and you're racing and you're the first. You keep looking back, and you always have to be ahead of the curve because someone else is trying to overtake you.
So everyone's looking for you and trying to do something better. We're trying and pushing to always do better and better. We've launched new items. We have rebranded. There's so much we have done to keep going, to go as fast as we can.
All these bigger brands are slower. That's the advantage of being an emerging small brand: we can make decisions very quickly, and we can switch and change very quickly and adapt to the market much faster than a bigger brand that has bureaucracy and so many decision-makers.
Their focus is, it's funny, I was talking to a friend, and it's like mac and cheese. Kraft has been there for so many years, and there are so many new companies doing all these better-for-you products. I'm sure Kraft could have done a better-for-you mac and cheese, but their focus is, "Do I make the packaging a bit bigger, a bit smaller, blue, more blue, less blue?" They haven't focused on improving the ingredients, and they don't think they have to. But other people are seeing the white space, and so many brands have taken over that part.
There's a lot of changes in the sauce area, and Primal Kitchen did a great job when it comes to condiments, the mayos and the ketchup. We're trying to do the same thing in the dips category. That's kind of who we try to be, while still giving authentic, high-quality ingredients.
Now, with GLP-1s, there's a broader shift toward wanting less food but better quality, and that trend has worked in our favor. We feel good about where we're positioned — we're just not taking it for granted.
What have been the biggest challenges?
We launched labneh. That was our first to market in terms of the fastest-moving market. There were some labnehs focusing more on the ethnic market, but less focused on the American mainstream market with flavored labneh.
That's been the advantage. The hard part of having something first to market is that
education is really expensive and really hard. That was kind of the biggest challenge.
As we grew and added more items, instead of being first to market in the product line, our focus has become more about getting better for you. Similar to the example I mentioned with the Kraft noodles, we see a product that is good and doing well in the market but can be improved significantly.
We come in and improve it, both on ingredients, but also on packaging, making it more fun.
Because consumers these days want to have an emotional relationship with the brand. They don't see food as, "Let me just buy this and eat it." They see food as an experience. We're trying to replicate that restaurant experience at home, so they have to get some attachment to the brand.
The brand has to feel cool. That feel effect is important, and we try to give that to consumers.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
This year, 2026, early on, we rebranded. The objective for this year was to get a lot of doors and get as many doors as we can, the right doors. We had a list of target customers, and we were lucky that we hit most of them.
Next year, the focus will be focusing on velocities in the doors we have. Because we already have very strong retail partners, it's better to improve distribution. Adding more SKUs to the current retailers is one thing we want to focus on, increasing velocities as well, to make sure we're getting on-shelf.
Getting on-shelf is the easier part; staying on-shelf is the harder part. Although we're doing very well, we want to do even better because it becomes more profitable for us to turn around that shelf multiple times.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
I was born in Geneva, grew up in Paris, went to high school in Lebanon, went to college in the UK, and then moved to Nigeria, where I took over the family business.
I was running a CPG hair extension and beauty company in Nigeria. So it's CPG. You're still
trying to understand the consumer and find solutions on how to make products better for
consumers and give them better value propositions.
But it's a different industry. It's a different country. I ran the business. We had 7,000 employees. We had a very big exit with a strategic, but it was a family business.
I was always passionate about launching my own CPG. I fell in love with CPG, and I had a
special love for food. I grew up with Hashimoto disease, which is a thyroid autoimmune disease. They had to be better for you. For me, it was not a trend. It's a lifestyle that I had to adapt to since I was seven years old. I've always had to eat better for me because otherwise I would have health issues. I had to look at the ingredient decks, everything I had to eat growing up because of that disease.
I've always had the dream to give better-for-you products back to consumers. I always saw that gap.
I moved to the U.S. in 2020 after a big explosion in Lebanon, the biggest non-nuclear explosion in recent history. My apartment got destroyed. I survived. I decided to move. My wife, myself, and one of my kids, at the time he was the only one born, moved to the U.S. in the midst of COVID.
I had the plan to launch a food company. I didn't know where to start. I didn't know how to start. But during COVID, it was hard to meet people. I spent most of my time in grocery aisles trying to watch the behavior of consumers and understand what's missing on the shelf, trying to talk to people.
It took me a year and a half to have the guts to take action. I went to the office to get a
laptop and Google. At the time, there was no AI. I wish we had ChatGPT. I used Google to start Yaza. That's how I started.
It was my back against the wall. Initially, I was waiting for COVID to be over, and then Omicron came, and things kept changing, and I just couldn't wait anymore.
I had to start somewhere, and I took the risk, and things have been going great so far.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
When I was handling the business in Nigeria, it was a family business. It was family-run, so
there were no systems or processes in place.
When we sold the company to a strategic, we spent three years in transition. Those three years were great learning for me to know how to build systems and processes and to gain leadership skills. I've used a lot of that in my experience at Yaza.
But when you ask me, like, what did I have to learn? I had to learn everything.
The way I did it is I just made sure from day one that I had the right people around me. I couldn't have done it without them. They are the main reason behind the success of Yaza: having the right team around you.
Because no one knows everything. I think step one is to know that you don't know everything. Step two is to go find the person who knows things better.
I hire people who are better than me at different things, and we were able to build Yaza together.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
I love connecting people. I love talking to people. I love that human aspect of companies.
Because, like we said, everyone knows something.
I think the biggest challenge that I speak to a lot of founders and entrepreneurs about, is that people don't talk to each other as much. That's how a lot of companies fail. Communication is the most important part of running a company and making sure that everyone is aware and on the same page.
That's really a big factor. As a person, I've tried to give back to the community by talking to other founders that are earlier stage than I am and trying to see how I can help.
Because that's something I wish I had when I started. It doesn't matter what you're selling, whether you're selling labneh or different dips, or you're selling tomato sauce, we're all going through similar challenges.
And we all have the same problems. Sometimes talking to someone, even I benefit from them. I've benefited a lot from people who are earlier because they figure out something I haven't figured out. And I am helping them figure out something else.
And that's really important, to keep talking. I have people who are competitors to Yaza, and we have a very strong relationship and we talk. I enjoy those conversations. There's some confidentiality that we don't share, but we try and share as much as possible to help each other.
What I like about the ecosystem here is that it's small. CPG is a very small ecosystem. Everyone knows everyone.
From day one, they tell you, "Be careful, this person is a bad person, this person is a good person." Most of the people are good people. But reputation is really important.
A lot of people, you know where to go, and direct you to the right people and are like, "Be careful, don't talk to that person, but talk to the other person." And that helps a lot.
Especially because once an ecosystem is smaller, it forces people to kind of come together. And it's funny, because every time I go—the first time I went to a trade show, I felt like, "Where am I?" I didn't know anyone.
Now I go to a trade show and it feels like a reunion. I know a lot of people now, and I genuinely enjoy that social side of it.
And I've been in the industry for three years. I've been in the market for—yeah, we're about to hit this month, three years in retail. And, you know, it feels like a lifetime.
And I believe, Sean, this is very important, which is why I like to talk to competition: together, we are improving the ecosystem, the marketplace. We have to put pressure on each other to make a better place. And honestly, the market's still so big that we're far from running out of room to grow together.
When I see a new labneh company, I'm genuinely happy about it — because that means it's creating more awareness for the category, bringing more players to the category, and putting more pressure on retailers to bring in a product like ours.
Because some retailers don't even have one. When they see there are five or six brands, I was meeting with a retailer and they're like, "I've never heard of this before." And then this year, I have five brands applying for it.
That's a good sign. That's not a bad thing.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
We've made a lot of mistakes. And, I wish we didn't make them, but I think that's how we learned.
I can give you example number one, where we did the branding. We thought the branding was perfect. The mistake was, which is something I learned over time, we did not make a sample cup, take it to the grocery store, and see how it looks on the shelf.
So after we launched, after I saw it on the shelf for the first time, now three years ago, I'm like, "Oh my God, I wish it was more visible." It was hard to find. It's hard to see.
We took our time to rebrand and fix the packaging. In life, you make mistakes. And I think the earlier you recognize and accept the mistake, the better it is. You don't have to make the change as quickly, but you have to accept the mistake.
And a lot of people, unfortunately, take time to accept their mistakes because of that ego. And in CPG or any business you do, you should put that aside because you're going to make mistakes.
And I know I've made hundreds of mistakes as we go. We're learning from mistakes and making sure we don't do them again as we keep going.
What is your why?
Before I moved here, I looked at different markets, different places where I would start. And as we grew, we evolved. And your why evolves over time. And it's fine for it to evolve.
We moved from a labneh company to a dips platform, a Mediterranean dips platform, giving consumers everyday Mediterranean flavors to their meals, whether it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack.
I don't know — ask me again in a year and the answer might be different. The more time you spend in this ecosystem, talking to people and to buyers, the more gaps you start to see.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
If you're familiar with Costco and Costco roadshows, I was doing a roadshow for Costco. A colleague and I were in Maryland, and we were having dinner in a local restaurant.
Most of the dinner, we had four people keep staring at me, and I'm like, "What's going on?" I felt weird. And they came to me and they're like, "Can we take a picture? Our mother is a big fan of the brand."
And they knew the brand. They knew who I was. They took a picture. And that felt, all the hard work that goes in. It was a long day. It was 9:30 p.m. after being on your feet for 14 hours.
And it was very nice. It felt very good. I was so tired. I was dead. That gave me full energy. It was a happy moment.
Also, I think it's hard to explain, but every founder probably feels the same. Every time I go to a grocery store and I see my product on the shelf for the first time, the joy that comes with all the hard work that we put in and that everyone puts in, feeling that joy takes it all away.
Piece of Advice
Two things. And I think they combine: get the right people around you.
So build a good, strong network of other founders or other people in the industry and talk to them. Whether it is regularly—I have a monthly call with a roundtable of CEOs that we talk about everything. I also have some CPG friends. We text maybe once or twice every month, and we always have chats when we all have long drives and someone has an hour or wants to talk about stuff.
So build that.
The other thing which I've started doing is building strong advisors around you. People who have done it before, people who have gone through everything you're going through, and they want to give back.
I have two advisors. They're amazing, and they're willing to give back. And there's a lot of them out there.
Find advisors who can help — there's no point making the same expensive, time-consuming mistakes someone else already has.
And there's no point in trying to figure out things that someone else has figured out.
One thing, Sean, that no one knows what they're doing. I promise you, no one knows what they're doing. And everyone's learning as they go.
Finding someone who's learned it and knows a little bit better than you do—they still don't know what they're doing, they're working, but they know it a little bit better. It's better than trying it out on your own.
Community Callout
My two advisors: Morgan Zanotti
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Yaza and Founder, Christian Karim Khalil., for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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