ABC Ventures · Chapter I · Team Dossier
A reading of the eighteen individuals and three corporate capabilities assembled in the ABC Food Chapter I. folder, mapped against the four production lines, the retail channel strategy and the 5th Table category plan of the U.S. venture.
This is an alignment plan, not a hiring recommendation and not an endorsement of any individual. It answers one question: given what the Chapter I files actually say, where does each person or firm fit in the Ā Levantine build — and what is still missing?
Every statement about a person below is drawn from the CV, bio or presentation they themselves supplied. Nothing has been verified independently: not the employment dates, not the capacities, not the titles. Where a document is internally inconsistent, out of date, or raises a question that matters to this venture, it is flagged in the card itself rather than smoothed over.
The commentary in each card is written as a takdim — a presentation note of the kind you would give verbally when walking a counterparty through the bench. It is deliberately candid about fit, because a bench presented without its gaps is not a bench, it is a brochure.
A bench of this kind is not found on a database. It is the product of twenty-five years in which the Narin family has built first-hand experience, knowledge and a working network across three continents — Asia, Europe and America — and of the selectivity it applies in using them: the selectivity of the panayır, the Anatolian trade fair, where a merchant walks the whole ground, knows who is behind every stall, and picks the one counterparty worth dealing with rather than the loudest. That instinct, and the network that makes it usable, are a direct manifestation of the family's Turkish roots. They are what turns a folder of CVs into a bench with a thesis behind it.
Section 7.2 of the draft Operating Agreement states that ALA's in-kind Services do not include services requiring a professional licence or customarily procured from third parties — and names, specifically, engineers, food-safety and certification consultants and sector business specialists. Under §7.4 those are third-party costs of the Company, funded from Contributed Capital on Board approval.
Most of this Chapter I pool falls on the third-party side of that line. These eighteen people cannot simply be folded into ALA's 20% in-kind contribution. Each one needs to be assigned, deliberately and in writing, to one of three buckets before any engagement letter is signed. Section 06 below sets out the three buckets.
The Ā Levantine concept, as currently framed, demands capability across four production lines and two non-production workstreams. The bench has to be read against that frame, not against generic "food industry experience".
| Workstream | What it is | What it demands of a team |
|---|---|---|
| Line 1 Meat processing | Ohanyan's Fresno core — bastırma, soujouk, manti, lahmajun — under a USDA/FSIS establishment grant, to be upgraded and scaled. | Industrial meat and ready-meal process engineering; production planning at scale; U.S. plant-level regulatory competence. |
| Line 2 Dairy | Ice cream, milk desserts, yoghurt, cheese. "Mado USA" currently on hold; cheese and dessert remain live. | Dairy plant design and automation; cheese and dessert technology; a co-manufacturing or supply route while the venture has no dairy plant. |
| Line 3 Meze / cook–chill–pack | The engine of the retail plan: fresh meze from a central kitchen — hummus, babaganoush, cacık — in refrigerated trucks to in-store Meze Bars. | Central-kitchen design and commissioning; authentic Levantine recipe authority; shelf-life technology (HPP); cold-chain discipline. |
| Line 4 Bakery | Simit, poğaça, pide, lahmacun and other baked goods. | High-volume automated bakery lines; frozen-dough systems; multi-store bakery retail operations. |
| Channel Retail & Meze Bar | In-store pop-up Meze Bars in chains such as Kroger and Albertsons, modelled on supermarket sushi bars; semi-cooked meze packs for Trader Joe's; Costco, Target, Walmart as the target shelf. | Private-label and category management; retail format design; SOP and training systems; multi-unit rollout discipline. |
| Platform 5th Table & corporate | The category and certification layer — the NGO ("Levantine Council"), Segment Authentication, and the corporate/capital architecture of ABC Ventures. | Academic and scientific standing in the U.S.; finance, budgeting and board reporting; franchise system architecture. |
Eighteen individuals, read against the six workstreams. Readiness is an assessment of how close the person is to being usable on the U.S. side today — not of their professional quality, which in most cases is high.
| Person | Primary fit | Proposed role in Ā Levantine | Readiness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mahir Turhan | Meze 5th Table | U.S.-side food science authority; chair candidate for the Levantine Council; shelf-life and process validation | DEPLOYABLE |
| Alaattin Tekin | Meze Bakery | Central kitchen / Atelier by Creators product lab — build and commission | DEPLOYABLE |
| Sait Tangülü | Meat Meze Bakery | Chief technology / industrialisation — HPP, autoclave, automated lines | DEPLOYABLE |
| Salih Yazar | Dairy Bakery | Plant design, automation and commissioning (via Lacto Proses) | DEPLOYABLE |
| İbrahim Nusret Yüce | Channel | Private label and retail channel development; supply-chain-to-commercial bridge | TRANSFERABLE |
| Hasan İbrahim Toksoy | Channel Platform | Meze Bar format design; brand and retail experience architecture | DEPLOYABLE |
| Aykut Hilmi Atik | Dairy Meat | Plant general management — the person who runs a factory in a foreign country | TRANSFERABLE |
| Rüçhan Cüneyt Okyar | Platform | Finance lead — budgeting, cash flow, bank and board reporting | CONDITIONAL |
| Selin Drin | Channel Meze | SOP, training systems and franchisee onboarding for Meze Bar rollout | TRANSFERABLE |
| Alper Yüksel | Bakery Channel | Bakery line owner; franchise system build | TRANSFERABLE |
| İsmail Haluk Çalışkan | Meat Channel | Production planning; the retailer's-eye view on the buying side | TRANSFERABLE |
| A. Metin Didinen | Bakery Channel | Multi-unit operations and franchise field management | TRANSFERABLE |
| Murteza Altuğ | Platform Channel | Franchise system architecture at QSR scale | CONDITIONAL |
| Reşat Kutsal | Meze | Executive chef — Levantine, Ottoman and Aegean recipe authority | CONDITIONAL |
| Sevda Doğan | Meze Platform | Wellness/functional formulation and regulatory discipline (via ELİKSİR) | TRANSFERABLE |
| İbrahim Yaman | Meze Platform | GMP facility engineering and quality-system build (via ELİKSİR) | TRANSFERABLE |
| Burak Oral | Channel | Meze Bar kiosk and plant-building design; rapid concept visualisation | TRANSFERABLE |
| Galip Türkoğlu | Platform | Premium hospitality — flagship or lounge/airport channel, if that channel is pursued | CONDITIONAL |
If the Meze Bar is the venture's most critical sales point, then the central kitchen that feeds it is the most critical build, and these are the people who build it.
Alaattin Tekin
Central Kitchen & Product Lab — Build and Commission
The single most directly relevant CV in the folder. He has already done, in North America, precisely what Phase 1 of Ā Levantine asks for: at Mado Canada (2021–23) he set up and commissioned the central kitchen, opened the Mississauga and Toronto Yonge branches, built the 2022 and 2023 menus, costed every recipe, and — the part that matters most — established local sourcing and hired and trained the crew.
Before that, as overseas kitchen operations manager for Simit Sarayı (2013–15), he opened 21 stores weighted toward the U.S. and Europe and took local food-safety certifications to A grade. He is the person who turns a recipe into a repeatable industrial output in a country whose supply chain he does not yet know — which is the whole problem of Fresno.
Born 1985 · Now Executive chef, Göçmen Artışın Bakery (since Jul 2025) · Also Karafırın 23-branch kitchen ops; Çaykur Çayla; Doygun Fırın; consulting in Canada, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar · Credentials MEB mastership, food & beverage / cookery
Sait Tangülü
Industrialisation & Process Technology
He solves the shelf-life problem the retail plan depends on. Fresh meze in refrigerated trucks to supermarket bars only works if the product holds. Tangülü has spent a decade applying autoclave and high-pressure processing to traditional Turkish dishes — process control and recipe adaptation both — and is now designing an HPP-pasteurised, prebiotic-enriched traditional dairy product. That is the Ā Levantine wellness proposition expressed as process engineering rather than marketing.
He also covers three of the four lines on his own: Türkiye's first industrial frozen lahmacun line and recipe (Line 1 and 4 both), an automated lahmacun line at 13 million units/month, a 10,000-unit/hour simit line now in design, and — from his Mado years — the first MAP milk dessert, first UHT salep and first instant milk dessert in Türkiye (Line 2). He has already developed products and store concepts adapted for the U.S. and Saudi markets.
Now Senior adviser to the board & CTO, Aslı Mağazacılık (since Jun 2026) · Prior CTO, Pek Dondurulmuş Gıda 2014–2026; Komşu Fırın (80 stores in 4 years); Yorpaş China; Yaşar Dondurma/Mado franchise manager 1999–2004 (100+ feasibility studies); McDonald's Türkiye · Reference given Serhan Yüce, MSY Mühendislik
Mahir Turhan
U.S. Food Science Authority · Levantine Council Chair Candidate
The only member of the pool who is confirmed to be a U.S. citizen (naturalised 2002), with five years of professional research experience in the United States. For a venture whose entire bench is otherwise Türkiye-resident, that single fact changes what he can be asked to do.
Professor of Food Engineering at Mersin University, co-founder of its department, 30+ years. His research sits unusually close to the venture's actual needs: heat and mass transfer, hydrothermal processing, food structure and water activity, and — directly relevant to a clean-label U.S. launch — gluten contamination in manufactured gluten-free foods, published twice, most recently in 2026. He has commercialised three products himself (medical honey, spreadable carob, cream honey), so he is not a purely academic signature.
His role as an expert evaluator for TÜBİTAK and the Ministry of Industry and Technology is exactly the posture the 5th Table "Segment Authentication" idea needs: someone whose working habit is to judge whether a claim stands up.
CV - Mahir Turan.pdf but the document itself reads Mahir Turhan throughout, including in the published citations. Correct the name everywhere before this CV goes to any counterparty.Status U.S. citizen (naturalised 2002), Turkish native · Base Mersin, Türkiye · Held Dean of the Graduate School; Head of Department
Reşat Kutsal
Executive Chef — Levantine Recipe Authority
Thirty-five years at the stove, and the concept list in his CV reads like the Ā Levantine menu brief written in advance: Mediterranean, Ottoman, Aegean, contemporary Turkish, international à la carte — built as concepts, with recipes, costings, purchasing and crew training attached, not just cooked.
He has done this across Germany, Switzerland and Bulgaria as well as Istanbul, which means he has repeatedly adapted a Levantine kitchen to a foreign supply chain and a foreign crew. He holds Bulgarian and Turkish citizenship, so he moves freely in the EU — useful if any part of the product development happens on the European side.
Born 1970 · Now Kitchens coordinator, Brasserie Pryme restaurant chain (since Apr 2023) · Certification Gastronomy expert / chef mastership, Foundation Eurofond (2000)
Salih Yazar
Plant Design, Automation & Commissioning
He is how a building becomes a factory. Managing partner of Lacto Proses, which designs and automates food plants — membrane filtration, pasteurisers, CIP systems, valve clusters. At Rella Gıda he ran investments on both lines the venture cares about: a mozzarella plant taken from 650 to 1,750 tonnes/month, a Pakistan mozzarella plant at 750 tonnes/month, and a whey and milk powder plant at 900 tonnes/month — managing an investment budget stated at over €25 million.
His bakery and frozen credentials are equally direct: supply chain director at Simit Sarayı, eleven years as supply chain director at Domino's Pizza Türkiye, plant manager at UNO for frozen and baked products, and consultancies commissioning high-capacity frozen pizza lines. A food engineer from ODTÜ, like MSY.
Born 1970, Silifke · Now Managing partner, Lacto Proses (since Apr 2023) · Prior Deputy GM, Rella Gıda 2017–23; Simit Sarayı 2010–11; Domino's Pizza 1999–2010; UNO 1995–99 · Education ODTÜ Food Engineering, 1993
Aykut Hilmi Atik
Plant General Management — Foreign Territory
A career spent running factories in countries that are not his own. An ODTÜ food engineer (1986) who has been factory director or general manager in Uzbekistan (the UZALASKA ice cream plant, 1997–2001), China (Urumqi), Kosovo, North Macedonia, Bulgaria (the Mado factory, 2022–23) and Croatia (Nova Europe). He speaks Russian, Uzbek and Uyghur at a working level alongside English.
That pattern is the relevant one. The hard part of Fresno is not making the product; it is making it in a plant staffed by people whose language, labour practice and regulatory culture are foreign to the owner. Atik has done that six times. He also brings the Mado/Yaşar Dondurma logistics coordination years (2001–04) and early quality-control grounding at Pınar and Tat Konserve.
Born 1962, Karabük · Education ODTÜ Food Engineering, 1986 · Languages English (good); Russian, Uzbek, Uyghur (medium); Croatian, Macedonian (basic) · Also Co-founder, IDEA3 foreign trade (Italy, Germany, Poland, Moldova); founder/GM, Süto Gıda
İsmail Haluk Çalışkan
Production Planning · Retailer-Side Perspective
He has sat on both sides of the shelf, which is rarer than it sounds and directly useful to a venture whose plan is to sell into Kroger and Albertsons. On the retail side: food purchasing at Carrefour, store and shopping-centre management at Tesco Kipa, regional management at Onur Hipermarketleri. On the supply side: sales manager at Başyazıcı Et Ürünleri (a meat processor — relevant to Line 1), production manager and later production planning manager at Mado, and most recently production planning manager at Seyidoğlu Gıda.
His value is that he knows what a category buyer actually asks for, and he knows what a plant can actually deliver against it. He is also a certified master trainer with a pastry mastership — unusual depth for a planning role.
Born 1970 · Most recent Production planning manager, Seyidoğlu Gıda, Oct 2024 – Aug 2026 · Mado production manager 2003–06; production planning 2020–21 · Certifications Quality/internal audit (TSE), master trainer (MEB)
Sevda Doğan & İbrahim Yaman
ELİKSİR — Formulation, GMP Facility & Regulatory
The pool's only genuine "wellness" capability, and it is a serious one. Both are ODTÜ chemistry/chemical engineers with senior careers at Roche, Sandoz, Novartis and Abdi İbrahim — 39 and 37 years respectively — who co-founded ELİKSİR to build turnkey production facilities and develop formulations for pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, food supplements, traditional herbal products and cosmetics.
What they offer Ā Levantine is a discipline transplant. Their standard operating environment is EU-GMP, GLP, ISO and HACCP, with documentation systems, audit preparation and key-personnel training built in. A food venture that intends to make health claims and own a certification seal needs that rigour at the start, not after the first FDA letter. Their reference list runs to turnkey plants for Sandoz, Novartis, VEM, Bezmialem University's GMP pilot plant, Orzax, ENA Farma and Naturmed.
Sevda Doğan GM & co-founder; production, QC/QA, planning, supply chain, R&D, regulatory, marketing & sales, business development · İbrahim Yaman Technical manager & co-founder; production, technology & process development, GMP, engineering, HSE, lean manufacturing
Hasan İbrahim Toksoy
Retail Format & Brand Experience Architecture
The Meze Bar is a retail format, and he designs retail formats. Managing partner of QUARTET (Antwerp), an office built specifically around designing, implementing and managing customer experience with a focus on food retail, organised into four areas — management advisory, brand and experience design, expansion and franchise strategies, and M&A advisory. That is the exact service set the Meze Bar rollout will need.
Behind it sits operating weight: Operations Excellence Leader for Burger King EMEA/Mediterranean in London, leading a team of eight across seven countries and thirteen markets, including turnaround projects in Türkiye, Italy and Israel. He took 50% of BurgerLab and restructured it into three companies with a franchise model that gave store employees minority ownership. He has been a board advisor to Mado since 2009, where he established the international business unit and drove SAP, Micros POS and Turquality certification. ITU management engineering MSc on top of a civil engineering degree; chaired DEİK's Retail and Logistics Committee.
Base Antwerp, Belgium · Languages Turkish, English (fluent), Dutch (intermediate) · Also &CREATE London; Element 8 Istanbul (TSE-certified consultancy); co-founder of the GARAJ Project (Plus Kitchen, Papabubble, Prototype)
İbrahim Nusret Yüce
Private Label & Retail Channel Development
The closest thing in the pool to the Kroger/Albertsons/Trader Joe's job. In 2021 he moved into Mado's Private Label Commercial Sales Directorate and managed the discount retail channel — one of Türkiye's largest and most competitive segments. Private label into a discount chain is structurally the same negotiation as a meze pack into Trader Joe's: thin margin, brutal specification discipline, volume commitments, and a buyer who can replace you.
He arrives at that from the operations side rather than from sales, which is the useful direction of travel: he co-established MSY Mühendislik in 2010 and ran it as general manager for ten years, then restructured Mado's Marmara warehouse and logistics. He is now Commercial Sales & Business Development Director at Yaşar Dondurma.
Education Maltepe University, International Trade (2010); MSc Healthcare Management, Biruni University · Contact domain trmsy.com
Selin Drin
SOP, Training Systems & Rollout Readiness
A Meze Bar inside a Kroger has to run identically in the ninetieth store as in the first. That is a systems problem, and it is her specialism: franchise system design, SOPs, standards, workflows and training systems, franchisee onboarding and opening preparation, and the adaptation of global concepts to local markets and local regulation.
She combines it with actual culinary training — MSA Culinary Arts Academy — and works as a culinary and menu-design consultant for QUARTET, which puts her and Toksoy in the same existing working relationship. She has handled European franchise operations for Mado Global since 2018, covering openings, menu, pricing, equipment and training coordination, and monthly P&L follow-up.
Now Managing partner, Pera Investments Consultancy (since Aug 2023); consultant to QUARTET (Belgium/remote); Mado Global European franchise operations (external) · Education Istanbul Bilgi University, International Relations; MSA Culinary Arts Academy · Also ICF-approved coach training
Alper Yüksel
Bakery Line & Franchise System
An owner, not a manager — which matters for a line the venture may want to run semi-autonomously. He co-founded Fırın Sanatı in 2017, built its franchise model to 19 stores, and acquired full ownership of the brand in 2026. Before that, as general manager of Fırın İstanbul (2012–16), he opened and ran 25 of the brand's 28 stores and held full management responsibility for a 5,000 m² production facility — bakery at industrial scale plus the retail network it feeds, which is the Line 4 shape exactly.
He also has direct international market-entry experience: as Director of International Investments at Simit Sarayı (2008–11) he was responsible for market entry, organisational setup and store openings across the Netherlands, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Northern Cyprus. His CV is notably careful to state where he did and did not hold final decision-making authority — a candour worth noting.
Born 1973 · Education Gazi University, Business Administration (1996) · Earlier Founder, Poliges ICT (1994–2006); Hicomm brand, 100+ dealer network
A. Metin Didinen
Multi-Unit Operations & Franchise Field Management
Thirty-four years, almost entirely inside Turkish bakery and café chains at the operating end. The anchor entry is six and a half years as Operations Director at Simit Sarayı covering factory and head office (2005–2011) — the period in which that business became the reference case for industrialising a Turkish bakery product and distributing it through a store network. That is the Line 4 precedent the venture keeps invoking.
Around it: franchise operations manager at Mado and at Kahve Sarayı, director at Komşu Fırın, operations director at Doygun Fırın Cafe, and most recently general coordinator of Shaurma No1 across Baku and Istanbul. He is a field operator — the person who visits the store and finds what the report did not say.
Born 1969 · Base Kadıköy, Istanbul · Most recent General coordinator, Shaurma No1, Baku & Istanbul, Jan 2022 – Jun 2025
Burak Oral
Format, Kiosk & Facility Design
He has already designed both ends of this venture. At one end, the management buildings of Rella Gıda's mozzarella and cake factories in Tuzla and Salihli — the industrial end. At the other, the design, project, implementation and franchise work for Çayla, the modern tea-house concept created for Çaykur — the retail-format end. The Meze Bar needs exactly that combination: a kiosk that reads as a brand and works as a kitchen.
A practical advantage worth naming: he has integrated AI image tools (Stable Diffusion, ComfyUI, ControlNet) into his architectural workflow, turning sketches into photorealistic renders. For a venture that will need to show Kroger or Albertsons what a Meze Bar looks like before one exists, that speed of visualisation is a real asset in a pitch.
Firm BOMA Mimarlık, founder & chief interior architect (since 2001) · Software AutoCAD, SketchUp, 3ds Max · Also Manpower Türkiye HQ; Stoa Kitchen & Bar; Anpa Gross
Rüçhan Cüneyt Okyar
Finance Lead — Budgeting, Banking, Board Reporting
He has been on both sides of the lending table, which is the useful profile for a venture that will be raising against assets it is still buying. Seven years at Yapı Kredi in corporate and project finance credit — analysing statements, cash flows and the creditworthiness of large investments — then credit-analysis management at Akbank. He then crossed into the real sector and built budgeting, cash-flow and financial-control systems inside multi-branch food and retail groups: Çaytaş Gıda, ART Mağazacılık (Fırın Sanatı — the same business as Alper Yüksel), CZM Group, and now Mado, where he is Accounting & Finance Coordinator.
Experience 15+ years · Education BA Economics, Anadolu University; advanced English, Boğaziçi University · Certifications Business Model Canvas, procurement, inventory management
Murteza Altuğ
Franchise System Architecture at QSR Scale
The largest operating scale in the folder by a distance. As Operation Director and then General Manager Assistant at TAB Gıda — Burger King, Sbarro and Popeyes in Türkiye — he coordinated operations across 342 restaurants and 6,000 team members. Before that, McDonald's Türkiye from 1986, restaurant manager to operations manager, with Hamburger University in 1990.
If the 5th Table ambition is to become a category — a Chobani-scale outcome — then somebody on the bench has to have genuinely operated at that scale and know what breaks. He does. He is also law-trained (Istanbul University), which is an unusual and useful background for franchise document work specifically.
Born 1964 · Education Istanbul University, Faculty of Law (1985–90) · Consulting markets listed Iraq (Erbil), Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Kosovo; Gerson Lehrman Group; private equity funds
Galip Türkoğlu
Premium Hospitality — Optional Channel
The most senior P&L in the folder, and the least obviously placed. Twenty-eight to thirty years in luxury hospitality: eighteen with Rixos and Accor, rising to Business Development Director and Cluster General Manager over two Egyptian resort properties — a portfolio described as 2,000 rooms and 2,600 team members — then CEO and shareholder of The Noor Hotels & Resorts under Sinpaş Holding (2024–26), and now Owner's Consultant in Cairo across Rixos, Ritz-Carlton and other developments. Kempinski before all of it; Cornell revenue management certification.
The honest reading: nothing in the four production lines needs him, and the Meze Bar is a grocery format, not a hospitality one. He becomes relevant in exactly two scenarios — if the venture builds a 5th Table flagship as a category statement rather than a restaurant, where his pre-opening and concept-positioning work is directly applicable; or if the airport and lounge channel is pursued, where premium food-and-beverage concept development and owner-side advisory is precisely his trade. He is also, uniquely in this pool, a person who has sat in the owner's chair on investment decisions and run development projects from concept through opening.
Languages Turkish (native), English (fluent), German (fluent) · Education Hotel Management, Eskişehir (2008); Cornell University advanced hospitality revenue management; Hilton Management Training, Washington D.C.
Three of the Chapter I documents are not individual CVs but company dossiers. They should be read as potential vendors or partners, not as hires — and two of them are already connected to each other.
Lacto Proses Makina San. A.Ş.
Dairy & Process Plant Engineering — Vendor
Salih Yazar's firm. Plant automation and plant design for dairy, juice, water and chemicals: membrane filtration, pasteurisers, CIP systems, valve clusters, automation. The reference list is dense with exactly the capacity the venture would need: Rella Gıda Salihli at 400 m³/day milk and a fully automatic mozzarella plant at 1,300 tonnes/month; IRC Faisalabad, Pakistan at 250 m³/day and 750 tonnes/month; Milk Academy M. Kemalpaşa, Bursa at 300 m³/day with a fully automatic mozzarella line; Akavi whey powder at 500 m³/day; Kavin Dairy in Duhok, Iraq (UHT milk, yoghurt, ayran, mozzarella).
Offices Acıbadem, Üsküdar, Istanbul · Factory İTOB OSB, Menderes, İzmir
MBH Gıda / Milk Academy / MA Foods
Dairy Producer — Partner or Supply Route
The most interesting strategic document in the folder, because it is a live alternative to building a dairy line at all. Founded 2006 by two industry professionals (Ali Ulvi Akyürek, ODTÜ food engineering, ex-Pınar/MİS/Ak Gıda/Yıldız Holding; Mehmet Yıldırım, ex-Ak Gıda/Muratbey), split 50/50 across three companies: MBH Gıda (production), Milk Academy (export) and MA Foods (production and export, with a 5% outside partner).
Why it matters here: the portfolio is labne, cream cheese, picnic cheeses, mozzarella, kashkaval, regional and flavoured cheeses, lactose-free, organic, double-protein and vegan — a Levantine meze-adjacent range, not a commodity dairy range. It holds BRC A grade plus organic, kosher and halal certification. Its second plant is in Bulgaria, giving EU origin and EU export capability. And it already exports to the U.S.A. — meaning the export permissions and the customs path exist today.
Note also the connection: Lacto Proses built Milk Academy's M. Kemalpaşa mozzarella line, and MSY's own record includes a Milk Academy valuation and share sale. These are not three unrelated documents.
Scale as stated in the deck 2 plants, 1 logistics centre, 1 treatment plant across Türkiye and Bulgaria; 274 employees (115 women); 180,000 m³/year milk intake capacity · Channels Retail (Nutrica, Al Nutrica, Organic), wholesale, private label
ELİKSİR İlaç Gıda Sağlık Kozmetik
Turnkey GMP Facilities & Formulation — Vendor
Sevda Doğan and İbrahim Yaman's consultancy, covering four activity areas: turnkey factory projects and project management; formulation and product development; machinery and equipment supply and installation; and training and workshops in GMP, GLP, quality systems and audits. Their formulation process is set out end to end — lab-scale trials for taste, odour, texture and formula; pilot production; stability; packaging materials; technical regulatory file preparation; contract manufacturing agreements; commercial production; registration; and branding and market entry.
The relevance to Ā Levantine is specific. If the venture is going to claim the Mediterranean-diet wellness position rather than merely assert it — functional meze, prebiotic dairy, clean-label supplement adjacencies — somebody has to run a disciplined formulation and stability process behind the claim. ELİKSİR runs that process for a living, in an industry where a regulator will test the claim. Their herbal raw-material work with Bezmialem University also offers an academic partner precedent that could inform how the Levantine Council is structured.
Reference projects as company executives Sandoz Levent & Bakırköy; Novartis Kurtköy; Sandoz Gebze; VEM Çerkezköy; Mamsel Tuzla; Naturmed Antalya; Bezmialem GMP pilot plant · As consultants Elit Cosmetics, Elit Food Supplement, ENA Farma, Orzax, TAB İlaç, Pharmachimica, Dermo Grup, Uzer İlaç and others
This is the most valuable section of the document. The pool is deep in Turkish food manufacturing, franchise operations and plant engineering. It is close to empty in everything that is specifically American about the plan.
| Gap | Why it bites | Where it must come from |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. work authorisation | Only Mahir Turhan is a confirmed U.S. citizen. Reşat Kutsal holds an EU (Bulgarian) passport, which confers nothing in the U.S. Everyone else appears Türkiye-resident. A plan that needs a central kitchen commissioned in Fresno cannot be staffed by people who cannot lawfully work there. | U.S. immigration counsel, engaged early. The venture's structure may support intra-company transfer routes once ABC Ventures and a U.S. operating entity both exist, and specialist routes may suit individual profiles — but which routes are actually available, and on what timeline, is a question for counsel, not for this document. This is the first external engagement to make. |
| U.S. plant regulatory — FDA / FSMA / USDA-FSIS | Ohanyan's holds the FSIS establishment grant that makes the meat line possible. A change of ownership is not a neutral event for that grant, and the FSMA preventive-controls regime governs everything else. Nobody in the pool has run a U.S.-regulated plant. | A U.S. food regulatory consultant and a PCQI-qualified individual, engaged before the transaction structure is fixed, because the answer may influence whether the deal is an equity purchase or an asset purchase. |
| U.S. retail buyer relationships | The entire Meze Bar thesis depends on getting in front of category managers at Kroger, Albertsons, Costco, Target, Walmart and Trader Joe's. Every retail relationship in this pool is Turkish or European. İbrahim Nusret Yüce has the skill; nobody has the contacts. | A U.S. broker or category-management hire, or an acquisition that brings the relationships with it — which is one of the strongest arguments for taking the FOODMatch conversation seriously. |
| U.S. cold-chain & DSD logistics | "Own our own cold-chain distribution channel" is the stated core of the growth plan. Refrigerated direct-store-delivery in the U.S. is a specific operating discipline with its own economics, labour model and route density maths. | External. No one here has run U.S. distribution. Consider whether the first version should be a 3PL partnership rather than an owned fleet. |
| Consumer brand & marketing | The starkest gap. Ā Levantine is explicitly built for Gen Z, and there is not one marketing, brand strategy, social, D2C or consumer-insight professional in eighteen CVs. The bench is operations, engineering and franchise — it can build the thing, but not make anyone want it. | A U.S. consumer brand lead. Burak Oral and Hasan İbrahim Toksoy cover format and physical identity, which is a different discipline from demand creation. Do not let the presence of designers disguise the absence of marketers. |
| U.S. finance, tax & accounting | A Delaware entity, an IRC §351 structure, a Turkish-resident majority member seeking Ministry of Trade outbound-investment support, and a U.S. operating company to consolidate. Rüçhan Cüneyt Okyar's training is Turkish. | A U.S. CPA firm, plus cross-border tax counsel. Third-party cost under §7.4, not in-kind. |
| U.S. HR & food-plant labour | Fresno plant labour, California employment law, and the staffing of in-store Meze Bars across a retail chain are three different HR problems and nobody in the pool owns any of them. | U.S. employment counsel and, at rollout, a U.S. HR lead. |
| Independence of the bench | Eleven of the eighteen have Mado / Yaşar Dondurma / Simit Sarayı in their history, and two are currently employed by Yaşar Dondurma. This is a genuine strength — shared vocabulary, fast assembly, MSY's own network — and a genuine risk: single-ecosystem thinking, and live conflict and non-solicitation exposure. | Deliberate management, not avoidance. Clear the two current employees properly, and recruit at least the brand and U.S.-facing roles from outside the ecosystem so the venture has eyes that have not all been trained in the same place. |
This follows directly from the Operating Agreement finding at the top. Before any engagement, each person must be assigned to one of three buckets. The assignment is a commercial decision with real consequences for ALA's 20%, for the Company's capital calls, and for MSY's know-how licence.
VMG personnel and advisors engaged by ALA at ALA's own cost, performing the venture-architecture Services. This bucket is narrow by design. Putting a plant engineer or a food-safety consultant here would contradict §7.2's express exclusions and would expose ALA to a §7.5 non-performance argument it should not have to answer.
Board-approved, budgeted, funded from Contributed Capital. Most of this pool belongs here — in the OA's own words, "engineers, food-safety and certification consultants and sector business specialists". Salih Yazar's Lacto Proses and ELİKSİR are vendor contracts, not people. Sait Tangülü, Aykut Hilmi Atik, Alaattin Tekin, Mahir Turhan and Reşat Kutsal are specialist engagements. Each needs a scope, a fee and a Board resolution.
People who are effectively part of MSY's own know-how and ecosystem, contributed through the licence rather than engaged for a fee. The Mado/Yaşar Dondurma-connected profiles are the candidates — but this bucket needs MSY's explicit agreement on each name, because it affects what his contribution is understood to include.
The entity form has moved and the draft has not. The Operating Agreement in this folder is for ABC Ventures LLC, a Delaware limited liability company. The later decision was to form ABC Ventures Corp., a Delaware corporation, so that the IRC §351 80% control threshold works. Any bench or engagement document built on the current draft will carry the wrong entity. Confirm which is authoritative before anything is issued on letterhead.
Nobody should be engaged on a general retainer. The bench converts in four waves, each tied to a gate the venture has to pass anyway.
Now · No hires · Credibility and diligence only
Trigger: transaction signed · The sample kitchen becomes real
Trigger: a site decision (Azusa or successor) · Plant build
Trigger: first retailer agreement · Scale discipline
Trigger: proven unit economics · Category ownership
Seven things this document cannot answer, each of which changes the plan:
Everything in this document derives from the following files. No external research was performed; no claim here has been independently verified.
A note on the matrix: all fourteen names in ABD-CV-Özet.xlsx are matched to a document in the folder, but the matrix's own columns — education, expertise, fields of experience — are entirely empty. This alignment plan is, in effect, that matrix filled in. Four people with documents in the folder (Alaattin Tekin, Alper Yüksel, Sait Tangülü, Galip Türkoğlu) do not appear on the matrix at all and should be added to it.