Launching Hot Honey Labneh 🍯🌶🧀

One of the most magical things about building a CPG dip brand is watching an idea turn into something you can actually hold in your hands. For me, that’s having an artisanal product from the region I’m from (Turkey), made at scale with zero sacrifices to quality, while building a category in my New York home.

First two retailers of Hot Honey this week. Pop Up Grocer and Happier Grocery

When we launched BEZI Labneh a year ago, we started with Plain, Everything, and Red Pepper. No artificial flavors—just mixing real seasoning or pepper paste into labneh. Pretty soon, it became clear we needed more flavors. People were so drawn to “flavored” labnehs—even though that doesn’t exist in the market I grew up with.

I had the itch to make something sweet. BEZI’s plain labneh is creamier and less tangy than most of the ethnic labnehs out there in the US, and I kept thinking: what if we made a sweet version of it?

My unsuccessful fruity labneh trials in my New York kitchen, October 2024

So in December 2024, while visiting my parents in Istanbul, the idea of Hot Honey Labneh came to me. But not the regular hot honey—a cooler, BEZI version. I went straight to the artisanal food markets, hunting for the perfect pine honey and chili flakes. Those became the base of our 4th SKU.

Scenes from Kadikoy Balik Pazari - the outdoor grocery store that is known for their fish and spices. First place we sourced our ingredients for Hot Honey

Honey Sourcing 🍯

When people think of honey, they picture blossoms—bees flying from flower to flower. Pine honey is different. It isn’t floral at all. Bees collect the secretions of insects that live on pine trees, and turn it into a dense, amber honey with a flavor that’s earthy, resinous, and not overly sweet.

Turkey is the world’s largest producer of pine honey, and almost all of it comes from the Aegean coast—places like Muğla and Bodrum, where thick pine forests meet the sea. That’s the landscape I grew up with, and it’s what gives pine honey its unique character: grounded, mineral, complex—more like caramel than sugar.

Pine trees in my Bodrum home and me swimming by them this summer

Our pine honey comes from Balparmak, Turkey’s most trusted honey producers. They work directly with beekeepers in the Aegean and produce small, DOC-marked batches each season (May–November), which guarantees the honey really comes from these pine forests.

For me, pine honey was always part of the breakfast table—over bread, cheese, or yogurt. It’s more savory than flower honey, which is exactly why I thought it would pair so naturally with chili and BEZI labneh.

That’s why, when we started making Hot Honey BEZI, pine honey felt like the only choice. A direct link back to the Bodrum forests, to my own food memory.

Chili Sourcing 🌶

Turkey is a spice HEAVEN. Even in a regular grocery store, you’ll find at least five types of chili flakes. We tested the below:

• Antep (Gaziantep, Southeast Turkey) – bright, sharp, a little fruity. Used on kebabs.

• Maraş (Kahramanmaraş, Southeast Turkey) – deep red, sun-dried, balanced heat, slightly oily. Used on pide, soups, stews.

• Samandağ (Hatay, Mediterranean coast) – smokier, saltier, rustic. Common in mezes and tomato dishes.

• Urfa (Şanlıurfa, Southeast Turkey) – red, earthy, layered, gentler heat. Used in kebabs and grilled meats.

• Isot (Şanlıurfa, Southeast Turkey) – the same Urfa peppers but prepared differently: left to ferment and darken in the sun. Almost black, soft and oily, smoky-sweet with a slow heat. The signature spice in çiğ köfte.

I really wanted Isot to work. It’s one of my favorite spices. But in testing—it was actually the worst one. Too heavy, it killed the acid balance.

Urfa was the winner. It gave Hot Honey BEZI depth and sweetness without overwhelming it. The heat comes late—it sneaks up on you. That’s Urfa.

From Kitchen to CPG

The first batches were mixed in my parents’ kitchen, with my mom as sous chef. She’s a serious honey lover (it runs in the family), so her taste test mattered. She tried it, paused, and just said: “Wow, this is good.” Not the mom “you’re doing great sweetie” line—an actual gut reaction.

That’s when I knew we had something.

Of course, going from a spoonful in Istanbul to a shelf-stable product in New York is not as simple as it sounds. This is where my co-founder Hasan came in. He didn’t just scale the recipe—he literally built a custom alloy mixer that warms up the product while clearing out microbes, so there’s no microbial risk in the final labneh.

Easier said than done.

From our home mixing bowl to the custom machine that let us turn a “home recipe” into an industrial product… so it deserved a hug.

But we did it—with no additives, no flavorings, just the pine honey and Urfa chili flakes I found in that Istanbul market. What I would’ve bought at a farmers market in the winter is now possible in a CPG format.

So this is our love letter to a New York staple—Hot Honey—told through our Turkish roots.

And this week, Hot Honey BEZI hit select New York stores. Very soon, it’ll be on shelves at one of my dream retailers in the Northeast.

So here it is—our sourcing story, told transparently. Thanks for being here and reading along.

Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Live Laugh Labneh,

Ilay & Hasan