Nice idea! As an alt protein investor, I have been waiting for more exciting tofu companies to emerge in the west. I do like your argument why we should be promoting tofu right now due to its versatility and uniqueness. That said, I’d push back on the suggested intervention of promoting rare chinese tofus. There are not existing supply chains or known westernized recipes for them, like there are for simple tofus. Perhaps a better use of resources would be promoting ways of utilizing tofus that people can already readily buy, or even promotion of the true health benefits of soy.
Thanks for your pointers, Nate! I’m also curious—what sorts of tofus have you tried?
I’m with you on the challenge of building a new market from the ground up. That said, on the supply side, I’d expect importing palettes of rare tofus would be a lot easier than, say, building a production site or finding suitable co-packers for a new plant-based meat company. Especially since a lot of these tofus are already imported, just on a small scale, but from producers that have a lot of capacity. (It also helps that they can all be frozen, unlike simple tofus.)
That’s all assuming there’s demand—which like you said is tough without existing use cases. My current take, and I could be wrong, is that simple tofus just don’t have great product-market fit within western cuisines, and that this is unlikely to change in the short term. This is because of taste, textural, and cooking requirement issues that seem fundamental to firm/​soft/​silken tofu. (Silken tofu may be a slight exception—it seems to do well blended into baked goods and sauces, but I don’t think this will substitute for much animal product consumption.)
Rare tofus, while currently unused in western cooking, have a lot of seemingly better-fit use cases, which we’ve been looking into for our book. (From crazy yuba/​tofu skin pastries, to delicious stand-alone protein mains, to natural dumplings, … ) My bullishness is more of a long-term bet, that rare tofus will eventually fare better than ordinary ones, since the culinary signs seem to point that they could. If these novel culinary uses could get chefs excited, which is something other alt proteins have had trouble with, I think that would have big trickle down effects on demand.
Nice idea! As an alt protein investor, I have been waiting for more exciting tofu companies to emerge in the west. I do like your argument why we should be promoting tofu right now due to its versatility and uniqueness. That said, I’d push back on the suggested intervention of promoting rare chinese tofus. There are not existing supply chains or known westernized recipes for them, like there are for simple tofus. Perhaps a better use of resources would be promoting ways of utilizing tofus that people can already readily buy, or even promotion of the true health benefits of soy.
Thanks for your pointers, Nate! I’m also curious—what sorts of tofus have you tried?
I’m with you on the challenge of building a new market from the ground up. That said, on the supply side, I’d expect importing palettes of rare tofus would be a lot easier than, say, building a production site or finding suitable co-packers for a new plant-based meat company. Especially since a lot of these tofus are already imported, just on a small scale, but from producers that have a lot of capacity. (It also helps that they can all be frozen, unlike simple tofus.)
That’s all assuming there’s demand—which like you said is tough without existing use cases. My current take, and I could be wrong, is that simple tofus just don’t have great product-market fit within western cuisines, and that this is unlikely to change in the short term. This is because of taste, textural, and cooking requirement issues that seem fundamental to firm/​soft/​silken tofu. (Silken tofu may be a slight exception—it seems to do well blended into baked goods and sauces, but I don’t think this will substitute for much animal product consumption.)
Rare tofus, while currently unused in western cooking, have a lot of seemingly better-fit use cases, which we’ve been looking into for our book. (From crazy yuba/​tofu skin pastries, to delicious stand-alone protein mains, to natural dumplings, … ) My bullishness is more of a long-term bet, that rare tofus will eventually fare better than ordinary ones, since the culinary signs seem to point that they could. If these novel culinary uses could get chefs excited, which is something other alt proteins have had trouble with, I think that would have big trickle down effects on demand.