I’m working on growing the US tofu market—wrote a book on the subject (www.brokencuisine.com) and figuring out what’s next.
Besides tofu, I restarted and led the EA Los Angeles group and previously restarted and co-led the EA club at the University of Southern California.
Thanks Cameron, I appreciate the support!
Fair enough! I definitely stated that point too strongly, more of a “if you just order tofu for guests, without much meat/seafood, it could come across as rude.” Thanks for the pointer!
And glad to meet another tofu lover :)
This is a fair question! I should have added more explanation to the post.
TLDR: tofu is like chicken. Just as you would never cook chicken feet like chicken breast, so too do different tofus have vastly different uses, forms, and production methods. In particular, a few varieties that are “rare” or uncommon on China (and mostly absent elsewhere) seem particularly well suited to western cooking styles. I think of these like “chicken breasts,” whereas common tofus have about as much western appeal as “chicken feet.”
If you’re curious, I can shoot you a more in-depth explanation from our book. Just shoot me your email.
A list of Chinese tofus (link)
What is tofu?
In its simplest form, tofu is bean curd. Think of this like soymilk cheese. Drop something sour or minerally into fresh, hot soymilk and its proteins will coagulate, or bind together, into soft, pillowy curds. These curds can be left as is – to coalesce into silken tofu – or spooned into a mold and pressed into soft tofu, firm tofu, pressed tofu, or tofu sheets. In China, firm and pressed tofu are often smoked, salted, dehydrated, or fermented – which chemically transforms them into several other distinct varieties.
Not all tofu is bean curd, however. Some varieties are made from soy protein, rather than whole beans (like spongy tofu or qianyedoufu 千页豆腐). Others are harvested atop steaming soymilk, as a luxurious and creamy film (see yuba or youdoupi 油豆皮). While some Americans might scoff at calling these varieties “tofu,” they would be lonely in China. In the birthplace and mecca of tofu cooking, most everyone treats curded and non-curded soy products as one large category.
Beyond soy-based tofu, there are several non-soy varieties. These include starch-gelled tofus – made from rice, almonds, peanuts, chickpeas, oat chestnuts, hemp, and sesame – as well as a few protein gels – from eggs, pig’s blood, and milk. In terms of taste, texture, and nutrition, these ingredients differ greatly from their soy-based counterparts, but they are still referred to as “tofu.”
This is a good point—branding is so key. Creating contrast between normal and rare tofus could turn out to be a really powerful marketing tool, or make us sad and un-credible.
Very cool that you’ve spent time in Hunan. I’d love to visit someday. And absolutely, it blows my mind how people talk about western veganish cities—it’s a thousand times easier in China
Huh if only we had a “Samuel Adams tofu” to go with the beer! Tofu’s history in the States is pretty recent, but there may be something juicy there.
Personally, I would love to have more kinds of tofu to try. I agree with Jeremy that getting these exotic tofus in front of some food industry experts to get their feedback would probably be a good idea.
Absolutely with you this!
Thanks for all your pointers!
I wasn’t able to find a reliable survey with some cursory googling, but from personal experience and what I did see (for instance, this) it seems like getting a majority of meals from eating out is rare.
You’re definitely right here. Food expenditures at and away from home are pretty split, but given that the cost of eating out is higher, people eat more meals at home. The reason I think it might make sense to focus first on food service is less about end strategy and more about the sequence. Since chefs can better control UX, restaurantgoers are more likely to be impressed by rare tofus than folks cooking it for themselves. First impressions seem really important here. Besides taste, it’s also easier to get products into food service distribution channels than retail. That said, once we have better home cook-friendly use cases for these ingredients, and sufficient consumer demand, growth would come from retail.
So it’s not necessarily true that restaurant chefs developing new dishes would easily translate to a greater variety of dishes people would be able to cook in their own kitchens.
My intuition is that this would translate—if a few chefs could make rare tofus “sexy”, then that would have ripple effects, leading other chefs and food bloggers to also experiment. It seems harder to make ingredients sexy from the blogger side, without the ingredient devolving into a fad. I could be wrong, though.
I am part of a vegan/vegetarian club at my university, and we keep in touch with various local plant-based food businesses; many of them have track records of creating innovative new dishes, and would likely be happy to experiment with rare tofus. These are generally small-scale operations, so I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but if you’re interested in collaborating with them I can reach out. My club would also likely be willing to promote the project on social media (and, more generally, perhaps recruiting student groups with an interest in plant-based foods could be valuable to your social media campaign).
Thank you for offering! I’d love to connect. I’ll shoot you a Forum message :)
Interesting points on soybean meal vs soybean oil consumption.
I’m less concerned about the fish sauce question since we’d be promoting rare tofus within western cooking. (And most of Asia, especially the regions that use a lot of fish sauce, don’t use these specific tofu varieties.)
Thanks for the pointers!
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the rec—I’ve chatted with a few folks from GFI. We’ll try to engage with them more as we move forward.
That’s a great point about modeling concrete scenarios (like types/numbers of distribution points), rather than just assuming some percentage of market growth. I’ll try fleshing that out a bit. The reason I’m bullish on potential market size is that most common tofus have abysmal product-market fit outside the Asian American community, whereas rare tofus (at least in our research) seem to fare much better. If that pattern holds, and we can find high leverage marketing methods, it would seem strange if rare tofus don’t eventually eclipse the former. Like you said, though, this hypothesis needs more validation.
Also would be great to build a better “outside view.” Hopefully we’ll get a better sense in the coming months as we look into restaurant partnerships :)
These are good points. It’s crazy how the faces of western veganism have been predominantly white, despite the fact that most veg culture originated outside of Europe. Very much with you on “celebrating” rather than “discovering,” and being clear about cultural roots.
Appreciate your feedback!