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.
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.
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!
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 :)
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!
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
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.”
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 :)
Thanks Cameron, I appreciate the support!
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!
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.
I’d be interested to hear more about the tofus you have in mind.
There are quite a few “great fit” varieties. The ones that seem easiest to import and have the clearest uses cases are probably:
Shanghai tofu (上海素鸡 shanghaisuji) - ultra high in protein, rich/eggy/custardy flavor, somewhat bready structure when frozen, very distinct strengths. Left whole, we’ve turned it into unique sorts of cakes, dumplings, “crostinis”, protein crumbles, etc.
Spongy tofu (千页豆腐 qianyedoufu) - a fishcake-like tofu, pre-seasoned, delicious blended or left whole as a main, can be dense and chewy or light and silky.
Fermented tofu (腐乳 furu) - a seasoning that could be as diverse in flavor as aged cheeses, but that hasn’t yet been systematized.
Yuba (油豆皮 youdoupi) - the film that forms atop heated soymilk, rich flavored, high in protein, really interesting uses as a pastry shell, probably the easiest tofu to season.
I also love tofu gan (pressed tofu 豆腐干)! We’ve found it tastes surprisingly great thin sliced and added to grilled cheese, or also cooked with apple/sugar/cinnamon spices.
There are a number of rarer tofus that I hope can one day be commercialized in the west, but that are already hard to find in China:
Juicy tofu (包浆豆腐baojiangdoufu) - a meltable tofu popular in Yunnan province.
Charcoal ash tofu (荞灰豆腐 qiaohuidoufu) - a tofu from Guizhou province that’s coated in ash and slow cooked for a few days. It’s like tofu gan, but with a very tender texture and nice smoky flavor.
Bubbly tofu (泡豆腐 paodoufu) - a thin tofu sheet from Guizhou province that’s dried then cooked in hot rocks to puff up. It needs to be reconstituted (soaked) in liquid before using and has a wonderful texture.
PS I guess you might have come across this, but the world’s top restaurant has been popularising tempeh.
This is too cool! I might have to add a rest stop post EAG…
Have you considered that by increasing the variety, availability and tastiness of tofus, you could be extending the amount of time a current vegetarian/vegan remains committed? I think that as a movement we tend to focus on new converts, and neglect maintaining those who currently avoid animal products, especially in light of evidence that many vegetarian/vegans eventually revert to eating meat.
This is a great point, Bryan! I wonder how a “support vegetarians” angle would compare to a “help meat eaters reduce” branding. More broadly, it seems like it might hinge on how helpful it is (to the long or short-term success of the movement) to grow the # of vegetarians vs flexitarian allies. I’d expect those goals to have more overlap than difference, but it seems worthwhile to at least think about.
My hunch would be to focus first on high-end flexitarian chefs, to establish that the ingredients aren’t “just for vegans,” then try to expand within the veg community. But I could be wrong.
I suspect that people who already eat tofu would be the initial base for the new-to-the-West tofus.
I’m actually not so sure about this. From a flavor perspective, rare tofus taste pretty different from one another and have different use cases, so liking one type wouldn’t necessarily be strongly correlated with liking another. That said, there might be greater willingness to try?
Thanks for sharing your concerns here and taking time to write this all out. I agree that framing these ingredients in a sensitive way is really important.
I would second having Chinese people on your staff, as well as looking into ways your project can benefit the rural villages whose people developed the tofu.
I’m definitely looking for other allies and partners!! If you know anyone, I’d love to connect :)
I’ve heard a general rule to avoid implicitly playing into these stereotypes is to ask yourself whether the ethnic descriptor is necessary to get the point across. In this case, I don’t think it is, because tofu is already Chinese.
I’d actually disagree pretty strongly on this point—I think “Chinese” is a pretty important descriptor.
For folks in China, calling something “Chinese” is generally a symbol of pride, the same way American products might brag that they’re “made in America.” There are definitely cases where this isn’t true (i.e. Trump’s “China virus”), but bad examples don’t seem like a reason to not use the label in positive ways.
Besides pride and respect, there seems to be important information value. In non-Asian American communities, tofu is treated as this homogenous pan-Asian thing. The reason I think this is problematic is a) it’s culturally insensitive, b) it’s factually inaccurate, and c) it compresses Asian food into a monotony that’s harder for folks outside the communities to understand and appreciate.
Tofu is not just a Chinese thing, but the varieties we’re using are mostly Chinese. In this sense, labelling them as Chinese helps fight the cultural flattening. It also allows folks to dig deeper into how these ingredients are different. (There are some “pan-Asian” tofus, like firm/soft/silken, but our team isn’t focused on those.)
The alternative, not calling them Chinese, seems worse to me. Almost like saying, don’t call Italian olive oil “Italian.” It would probably be seen as disrespectful to producers in China, like not giving them credit, and it would restrict consumer understanding.
I’m less certain about the “rare” label. It seems that the word can have both positive and negative connotations, and sometimes provide important information value.
The main reason I call these tofus rare is to distinguish them from ordinary tofus. Differentiating them seems important because a) most US non-Asian Americans don’t love ordinary tofu; b) this dislike stems from inherent characteristics of ordinary tofu, rather than branding, meaning that negative perceptions will likely continue into the near-term future (happy to share more—my team’s done a bit of research into this question); c) if “rare” tofus can’t distinguish themselves from ordinary tofus, they will run into the same consumer opposition; d) “rare” tofus are fundamentally different from ordinary ones and could have wide appeal amongst anti-tofu foodies.
I think it’s also accurate to call them “rare”, as they aren’t common in most of the world. Many of these tofus aren’t even common within China.
Consumers find rare/scarce things more exciting and appealing. This is true for everything from rare collectibles, exclusive events, limited edition specials, etc. I don’t think the connotations are inherently positive or negative—sometimes they can be othering, other times they can increase interest, but it really depends on context.
Business often exploit, commoditize, and market “exotic” or “foreign” culture. I think this is pretty sad for many reasons, including that it marginalizes folks in our communities who identify with that culture. I think marketing rare tofus to western cooks, in the way we’re hoping to do, however, has almost the opposite effect—it engages folks with ingredients they otherwise would not know about, creating bonds between the U.S. and China at a time of historical tension, over common concerns—fighting climate change and enjoying delicious food. I’m also not trying to “own” any cultural aspect—the more folks working on this project, the happier I will be.
It’s possible there’s a better synonym—curious if anyone has thoughts.
Thanks Joel. And absolutely, I’d love to chat and hear your China story!
Suji is incredible! We’ve been calling it “Shanghai tofu” in our book, since vegetarian chicken can sometimes be misinterpreted as a mock meat.
Funny enough, if you freeze and thaw it a couple times, the crumb becomes very bread-like. Stew it in a creamy, sweet sauce, refrigerate it overnight, and it will have an almost “tres leches cake” consistency. Such a cool ingredient!
So I don’t think people should feel discouraged just from their low offer rate very much.
To clarify, is your main point here that that AI safety orgs could absorb a lot more talent, if folks were more qualified? If so, that’s also my understanding. I doubt, however, that general university groups would be the optimal way to build qualified and motivated applicants, because student clubs inherently spend a lot of time on non-development focused activities. It seems like outsourcing the recruitment pipeline to, say, Cambridge’s AGI Safety Fundamentals program, GCP guides program, plus cross-university skill-building workshops would accomplish the majority of what a successful university AI safety club might accomplish, plus some, with a lot less organizer time.
Given that those programs aren’t fully built out, it might make sense for organizers to spend more of their time helping to build up those programs, rather than devote a ton of time to an AI club at their home university.
What’s the distinction between “community building” and “movement building”?
Good catch—I added “movement building” late last night and it’s way too vague. I meant it to encompass important things that recruiting doesn’t really touch on, like upskilling, but it is way too unspecific. I’ll add a note
sure, I’ll shoot you a PM
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 :)