About Us

Ahırdağı began in 1961 as a small ice cream shop opened by Hacı Kerim Usta on Trabzon Avenue in Kahramanmaraş. It takes its name from Ahır Mountain, which rises north of the city and whose slopes are home to salep orchids, thyme and mountain herbs. Hacı Kerim Usta beat his ice cream with a paddle all summer in a copper vat cooled with snow brought down from the mountain in winter and stored in pits.

Three generations

In the 1980s his son Abdullah Ahırdağı took over the shop; he bought the first electric vat and opened shops in Gaziantep and Adana. Today the business is run by the third generation, Mahmut Ahırdağı and food engineer Zeynep Ahırdağı Kaya. In 2019 we opened our first shop outside the region in Kadıköy, Istanbul, and in 2021 we began cold-chain shipping across Türkiye.

6 February 2023

In the earthquakes centred on Kahramanmaraş, our main shop was badly damaged and we lost members of our team. We remember them with respect. We continued production for a while at the back of our Gaziantep shop; we rebuilt the main shop on the same plot in line with the current earthquake regulations and reopened it in spring 2025. Our new production centre on Azerbaycan Boulevard opened the same year.

What has not changed

• Only goat's milk, sugar and pure salep in plain cream
• Milk from the same three farms, collected no later than four hours after the morning milking
• A master beating every vat with a paddle
• Salep bought only from permitted, documented sources

Today

We work with a team of 64 at six locations. Our production centre is a dairy business approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (approval no. TR-46-0118). We produce about 1.2 tonnes of ice cream a day and ship more than 400 boxes a week.