Hakkı Akdeniz

Hakkı Akdeniz is a Turkish-born businessman of Kurdish origin who is the founder of the New York-based Champion Pizza chain. He is known for starting from homelessness and establishing his own pizzeria chain, and for his regular charity work for the homeless in the city.

He was born in 1984 in the Silvan district of Diyarbakır, in a large family. He first encountered pastry while working in a pita restaurant in his hometown as a child. He immigrated to Canada with his family in 1997 and worked as a pizza maker in Montreal for a while. In 2001, when he was in his early twenties, he arrived in New York with $240 in his pocket.

Unable to get support from an acquaintance who promised to help him, he spent his first nights at the Grand Central station, then stayed at the Bowery Mission shelter for more than three months and worked in its kitchen.

Champion Pizza

He started working as a dishwasher, saved money and became a pizza maker, and in 2009, he opened a small pizzeria shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Although business was slow at first, the shop won press attention when it won first place with its dough-turning demonstration in a pizza competition held in New York in 2010; The nickname "champion" left over from the competition became the name of the business.

Dough acrobatics shows also reached large audiences on social media. Over time, Champion Pizza grew into a chain with multiple locations in New York.

Akdeniz did not sever its ties with the organizations that hosted it. Along with organizations such as Bowery Mission, Breaking Ground, and City Relief, he regularly distributed pizza, clothing, blankets, and medicine to the homeless; He gave free food to homeless people who came to his shops and provided employment opportunities for some of them. It also increased food aid after Hurricane Sandy and in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

His work led to him being the subject of a Budweiser commercial that aired during Super Bowl LIV in 2020. In 2022, he was awarded the Great Immigrants honor, which the Carnegie Foundation gives annually to people with immigrant backgrounds; He also received various certificates of appreciation from city and state governments.

Akdeniz's story continues to be one of the frequently cited examples when issues of immigrant entrepreneurship and homelessness come to the fore in New York.