BEZI Hot Honey is a finalist for the CPG Oscars!

So one of my New Year’s resolutions was to share our story more and actually build our community… and it took me until February 5th to write this. Oh well.

I come bearing good news.

Some of our OG folks here might remember that we launched our Hot Honey Labneh last September with Whole Foods Northeast.

Today, we learned that BEZI Hot Honey is a finalist on what I call the CPG Oscars, NEXTY Award.

So why is this important enough for a whole post?

Mostly because there are a lot of people out there making something in their kitchen, their friends are like “oh my god this is insane,” and then they’re sitting there wondering… Is there any point?

I’ve always found it really inspiring to hear stories about people going through similar journey.

So this is ours for anyone out there.

When we launched BEZI in September 2024, we had three products. Around November, I started getting this itch. I kept coming back to this idea that labneh can be sweet, labneh can be salty, labneh can be anything. That was the whole thought. Nothing more structured than that.

Hasan and I tried a bunch of things. Strawberry. Sour cherry. Other recipes that, honestly, just flopped. And then one day I randomly thought of hot honey— just a gut feeling of this is a great idea.

Early trials for strawberry and cherry!

First thing I did was buy Mike’s Hot Honey and mix it into our plain labneh. And immediately I was like… this shit has legs.

People ask us all the time if we use Mike’s Hot Honey in our product. It’s an amazing product — it’s just wasn’t us.

A big part of launching BEZI for me was embracing my cultural identity. Both me and Hasan are born and raised in Istanbul. I’ve been in New York for eight years and call New York my home. So if you think about it, BEZI sits right in between those two places.

So the next thing I did, when I flew back to Turkey for the holidays, was go to the farmer’s market with my parents. We bought pine honey. Chili flakes from the Urfa region. This photo is from that day. My mom and I started testing it in my childhood home — different chilies, different ratios.

Where the first BEZI Hot Honey sourcing was done!! Istanbul Kadikoy Food Bazaar!

And I remember the first time my mom tried it. She just said, “This is good.”
Which, if you know Turkish moms, is basically a standing ovation. So when she said that, I knew we had something.

First BEZI Hot Honey test! December 23rd, 2024

Another huge piece of luck here — was Hasan, my co-founder.

We produce BEZI at Hasan’s family company, Bahcivan. Hot honey labneh does not exist in the world. It was is a thing that has a production process. I’m so grateful that Hasan and Hasan’s dad (aka Baba Bahcivan) believed in it, and so did the whole Bahcivan family.

That belief led us to partner with Turkey’s biggest pine honey producers, Balparmak. And Hasan and his Bahcivan team then built an entirely new system to make this product work — literally a custom tank that could mix honey into labneh. Which is apparently a very insane thing to try to do. But he did it <3

But… We were racing against time because we had Expo West coming up, and the technology wasn’t ready yet. So what did we do? We hand-mixed it.

We brought the hot honey mix in a suitcase and planned to mix it into BEZI Plain before the show.

But of course, poor Francesca and Hasan also had to manage my obsessive instincts — because immediately I was like, “This mixture doesn’t have vinegar.”
(And yes. I was right.)

So we ended up driving to a nearby Sprouts late the night before the show and remade the recipe at a bigger scale, literally measuring vinegar by drops.

Me and Hasan in our Airbnb in Anaheim before the show.. Francesca at the camera. Making the Hot Honey!

Then Hasan, Francesca, and I woke up at 5 a.m. every single show day. We mixed pine honey and chili flakes (AND VINEGAR) into labneh ourselves. We filled big tubs. We sampled it at Expo West that way.

I’m not totally sure if that was legal, but here we are.

And that product got us into Whole Foods.

When it finally launched in Whole Foods in September 2025, one year into our launch, it was surreal. Hot Honey pulled people in. It sold (and still sells) really, really well.

It just felt like such a characteristic product. Bold, a little weird. Very us.

I’m honestly not great at social media storytelling, but I am good at business storytelling.

So I applied for NEXTY award and told the real story of how this product came to life. These awards are insanely competitive. Usually it’s huge companies winning.

People ask me all the time how we test products. The honest answer is… we don’t.

I promise this is not a pick me and I have a point.

This product came from gut feeling, good sourcing, and an absurd amount of gratitude for my co-founder. Our friends and families ate it and gave feedback. I probably ate 2 lb of labneh alone as I was mixing it. And that was pretty much it.

So, my point is, if you’re reading this while making something in your kitchen and wondering if it’s worth trying — give it a shot. Gut feelings deserve way more credit than they get.

And that’s our story. Thanks for reading. And let’s manifest that we get this award.

As always,

Live Laugh Labneh