Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-host Jackie Brugliera and Mike Schneider.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
I'm enjoying the show, Melissa.
I'm so glad you're enjoying the show.
Jackie, how about you?
I haven't seen you in a little while.
I know you were traveling, and then we had our BevNET Live event.
How are you doing?
I know.
It's been a minute.
I'm good.
It feels good to be back home.
I feel like I was living out of a suitcase for a month.
But I got the experience of being a nomad.
You know, everyone's digital nomads now.
I had some interesting laptop setups in all my little locations.
But yeah, I hit up Europe.
I went to the East Coast.
We had BevNET Live, and now I'm back in California, just in time for 4th of July in the summer.
It's great timing.
Well, we're so glad to have you back here.
Just last week, we had an event here at the BevNET headquarters in Newton with the Startup CPG folks, which is a lot of fun.
We had Nancy Daniel of Madrasi Chai.
She brought over some of her delicious chai, which we actually happen to have right here.
Cheers.
And she did remind us all, of course, it's not chai tea because that's tea tea.
That's like ATM machine.
Oh, that's tasty.
It has like, it definitely has some of those more pungent spice flavors.
Her chai concentrate comes in a pouch with a little spigot.
You can get it sweetened, unsweetened.
And she said she's doing a lot of food service right now.
So she's selling to Mathworks, which I thought was really interesting.
So she's looking for places where they have, you know, a high percentage of Indian folks who would appreciate the product.
Oh, I thought it was for Mathletics and Mathletics.
No, well, I mean, Mathletics is probably a thing, right?
Like if you can have athletics, why can't you have Mathletics?
Like long division relay races?
I mean, they definitely have that, right?
Like, have you?
I mean, you watch Mean Girls and the limit doesn't exist.
People do Mathletics all the time.
Yeah.
So I think we're and they need to be.
They need to be well energized and hydrated.
And I feel like official beverage of Mathletics is chai.
Yeah, I feel like Madrasi Chai's tea is the perfect thing.
You know, what I really want to do is try adding some matcha to this.
On the way back from BevNET Live, I stopped at matcha full that place at Penn Station and I got a chai matcha, which I thought was really delicious.
Actually, matcha is great.
This is also you can make a dirty chai too, by just depth charging espresso shot.
And you've got all kinds of options.
We also had Mariah Hilton Wood and Aisha Shaw from Tilden Non-Alcoholic Cocktails.
Mike, have you tried these?
Oh, yeah, I've had Tilden cocktails.
Those are phenomenal.
I am so bummed.
So this weekend, I went to visit a friend in Connecticut, and they gave me a sample of the lace wing, which is fresh cucumber and lychee.
And then the tandem, which is orange and tart cherry.
So I brought the little samples to a friend's house so we could try them.
And I totally forgot, and they're in her fridge in Connecticut.
I'm so sad.
She's going to be happy because those are so thoughtfully formulated.
I think Tilden was one of the first that really started to lean into the complexity of flavors and understand that you could make something that was a new sort of adult beverage that you could call a cocktail.
It didn't have to be, I think, totally inspired by a current version of a cocktail.
They were trying to make this great drinking experience for people who care about the impact.
They don't want to have the impact of alcohol, but they want the quality of that experience.
Their flavor combination sounds so delicious.
The Lace Wing, which I mentioned, was fresh cucumber and lychee.
It looks like they also add some Szechuan and cayenne pepper to it for a little bit of a kick, which sounds delightful.
Jackie, any spicy beverages you've been consuming lately to beat the heat?
I mean, just lots of spicy margaritas.
I went to Mexico on Saturday, so that was my drink of choice.
We were just talking before we started recording about how someday maybe you'll move to the East Coast, but you'll never be able to say, like, oh, this weekend I went to Mexico and had some delicious spicy margaritas.
So that'll be hard to leave.
I know.
That's definitely a benefit of living here.
Jackie can teleport.
Haven't you?
She's been everywhere in the past, like in the past month.
Jackie's been everywhere.
I know she teleports.
That does make being a digital nomad easier, I suppose.
Right.
Yeah.
I was actually talking to my friends about, you know, what would be your superhero power that you'd want.
And I did say teleportation.
That would be my.
Is it like a Star Trek thing where you like stand in the transporter room and you just...
My theory for teleport, if people could teleport, they would just teleport.
Anytime something interesting happened, everyone would teleport there.
So it's a good thing you can't.
So I had an idea for how to, you know, how to regulate teleportation, which is you can only teleport from a city to an identical city name somewhere else.
So if we're in Newton, we'd have to teleport to Newton someplace.
That sucks.
No, think about it, like if you want to if you're if you wanted to go to like if you want to go to London and go to like just some local London and you can transport to London, England.
I guess like a lot of places in New England would transport you to like the UK, like go to Manchester and then go to Manchester, Manchester to Manchester, Paris to Paris.
What about New London, Connecticut?
Does that count?
Well, you go to probably like New London, New Hampshire or something.
Man, I don't know, but I'm going to be thinking about this for a long time.
We're going to make a map of all the different places we could transfer to.
It has to be semi-inconvenient or else I'm telling you, everyone's going to just teleport on top of each other.
You're going to have like a pile of people.
Yeah, it would be a death trap, really.
Well, I'm glad we got that sorted out.
In front of me, I also have some fancy pants cookies, which I know we've been talking about lately, and I can't stop talking about them because they're just so good.
Mike, you brought these gluten free chocolate chip cookies into my office this morning.
Jackie, have you guys been gifted with the fancy pants bounty over there in San Diego?
We have.
We've been crushing them.
I also just love the name.
I feel like when I was little, like, oh, you're a little miss fancy pants.
Like it's kind of fun and playful, but the product is delicious.
Did you ever take that as an insult because people are trying on your stuff?
You're such a fancy pants.
I always took it as a compliment every time I liked it.
Yeah, I am a fancy pants.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I want to be fancy.
Oh, my gosh.
So so these are gluten free chocolate chip cookies.
And who's the founder more of Duggan?
So I DM the fancy pants account, which I think is run by more Duggan herself, who we saw at the fancy food show, the fancy pants show.
And I was just telling everyone, I dare you to eat less than 10 of these cookies because there's a whole flight of them there.
And you have the opportunity to try every single flavor.
And I mean, you get to the gluten free and finally there's gluten free because I've been telling everyone about these cookies and I go are there gluten free versions?
I was like, I don't think so.
And then we go to the show and there they are.
And the pink package arrived today and they are extraordinary.
They are fantastic.
When I went away for the weekend, I came back and I went to grab the fancy pants cookies out of our pantry.
And my husband said, I ate a lot of those while you were gone, so there weren't many left.
You know, what I think is so interesting is she uses upcycled flour in these.
She doesn't call she doesn't call out the upcycled ingredients on the front of pack.
Instead, she does it right on the back.
And for the non gluten free, she uses upcycled oat milk flour.
And then for the gluten free, I noticed she uses upcycled okara flour, which I looked up.
And it looks like that's the leftover pulp of soybeans after soy milk or tofu has been made.
But I think it's it's such a good product.
And I was talking to Marty about these actually upstairs, the managing editor of BevNET, of course.
And we were talking about how it's such a good way to call out upcycled ingredients because you eat the cookie, you think it's delicious, you look at the back of the package, and then you feel even better about eating the product.
So yeah, it just seals the deal for a consumer, I feel like.
Exactly.
Do you have a favorite flavor, Jackie?
I wouldn't say I have a favorite flavor.
Mine's the one in my hand or the one in my mouth.
Yeah, I'm like, any of them.
Anyways, Mora Duggan, really amazing job with these.
And on their website, they have some really great sustainability facts.
So this year, they'll save 25 million gallons of water and divert enough greenhouse gas emissions to charge 2.7 million cell phones by baking with upcycled oat flour.
So all kinds of great sustainability information.
But at the end of the day, it's a really delicious cookie, which is what's going to sell these.
I've had five of these now.
Well, actually six, counting the one that I ate at Fancy Foods.
And this one might be my favorite.
Gluten-free chocolate chip might be my favorite.
This is insanely good.
Well done.
Yeah, well done.
And they've been iterating and iterating.
They've been around for so long.
They've done a bunch of different things.
And I'm so I'm just so excited about these.
Well, so much of CPG is iteration upon iteration.
Certainly that's the case for one of our favorite brands of ramen noodles here at BevNET & NOSH.
Sun Noodle has been tinkering with their product offerings for over 40 years and is now one of the most renowned noodle makers in the world.
In this episode of Community Call, I talked to Kenshiro Uki about how Sun Noodle uses customer feedback to fuel smart growth and innovation.
Please enjoy.
Today on Community Call, our guest is Kenshiro Uki, president of Sun Noodle.
Sun Noodle is one of the most renowned noodle makers in the world with over 40 years of experience and three generations contributing to Sun Noodle's success.
Today, we're going to hear about how they use customer feedback to fuel business growth and innovation.
Kenshiro, thank you so much for joining.
It's been such a pleasure to plan this with you and I'm so happy to have you on.
Well, it's super awesome to be here and thanks for following me on your show here.
So, 40 years of experience certainly has taught you a few things.
So I'm very excited for us to dig into the how and the why of everything you've done.
But could you start us off by helping us understand how the business started in Hawaii, right?
Exactly.
And so 43 years this year, it was five years before I was born, which is when my father started.
But it was really an opportunity that my grandfather, my father's father had back in the 1980s, where the Japanese economy was booming.
And my father was selected to, my grandfather was selected to be one of five business leaders to start a Japanese food business in Hawaii.
And so my grandfather had sent some money, some capital and some equipment, noodle making equipment to Hawaii.
But really, I think early on, he realized that something was not right about this group.
Maybe there was not a fit for him.
And so he immediately said, you know, he was, he wanted to be out of the partnership, but the equipment was already there.
And my grandfather had some capital and he asked my father, who was 20 at the time, to say, hey, rather than coming back to the family business, which was noodle making, how about you go out to Hawaii and start something on your own?
And that was kind of the first call.
My father is from Tochigi, Japan, which is about an hour north, didn't speak any English, didn't know anyone in Hawaii, but had this visual imagination of what Hawaii was, really beautiful, bright, great weather.
And so he jumped on the plane and headed to Hawaii to start his company, which was called Sun Noodle because of how sunny the island of Oahu was.
That certainly takes a sense of adventure, some courage and some optimism.
And actually, just out of curiosity, how difficult was it to sell the noodles as a product in Hawaii?
Is that something that people were pretty familiar with anyways?
And to that question, I always asked him because the population of Hawaii, 30% at one point was Japanese or Japanese Americans.
And so the majority of the people were Japanese, but it wasn't as easy as maybe he thought it was going to be.
You know, there were Japanese Americans, Japanese people from the plantation days.
And so although you had Japanese noodles coming to Hawaii, you know, I think the taste buds of the people in Hawaii were very different.
What's known as Simon, it's a soup noodle dish that came out of the plantation days, is probably the number one consumed soup noodle dish in Hawaii.
Very different from ramen in many ways, but something that the locals loved.
And so it wasn't easy for him to just come in and knock on doors and say, hey, here's Japanese ramen.
He had to really get the buy in.
And so he would go door to door and introduce himself again, he didn't speak any English.
And so he would take his products, he gets some feedback from the chefs and within 24 hours, reformulate and bring it back.
And I think doing that over that repetition of trial and error, many, many times his first customer, I think, took him as a supplier because of his dedication to the hard work.
But you know, obviously a lot of challenges, we he didn't have the types of raw ingredients that we have access to today.
The types of wheat flour that was available to him was not suited for noodles.
And so he had to do a lot of formulation there, but not an easy task for someone to start a business out in Hawaii.
And in 24 hours, no less.
Yeah, well, he had no customers and so he was really just trying to figure out what would fit for the local community, what the chefs were looking for and bringing his magic.
You know, my grandfather is also in the noodle business.
And so that was my father's kind of training and he knew how to make noodles and he just needed to figure out what the audience or the customers in Hawaii were looking for.
And that took some time, but over decades and over, you know, 43 years now, people of Hawaii know who Sun Noodle is at the state board and many, many households.
We certainly, I certainly and everyone I know knows who Sun Noodle is.
So when things started off, it was all food service.
It was I would say probably the first 10 years was was all food service.
And then as as he's built his network with with other buyers and customers, that's when we call it specialty markets that were focused on Japanese food or Asian foods.
They would ask him for products that he could make for their store shelves.
And that was his first kind of entry into what we call retail today.
But it was ethnic background near restaurant as our retailers, the likes of like 99 Ranch Market or H Mart that we see today.
Those local stores were in Hawaii.
And that's where he got products on shelf, so that home cooks could make really good ramen or noodle dishes in their kitchens.
We're going to get to retail partnerships a little bit later on in the conversation.
Certainly your collaboration with Whole Foods Market begs some diving into.
So food service was primarily the business for the first 10 years or so.
You all started delivering direct, is that right?
So you delivered direct to these restaurants until you got to what point?
So in Hawaii, the delivery started with my dad first.
And so he was making noodles, delivering them and doing the sales.
While my mother was in the office making sure that the people were being paid well and people were taken care of.
And so they worked really well together in that sense.
And in Hawaii, because it's such a small island, restaurants needed noodles to be made and delivered every day.
And so even to today, we deliver in Hawaii to about 600, 700 accounts, five or six days a week.
And that's been something special of Hawaii.
When one of our customers from Hawaii decided to open in Irvine, California, that's when we started shipping our products from Hawaii on a plane to get it to Southern California for this one customer that was looking for Sun Noodle.
And that really opened up the doors for us to think about products being sent to the mainland, as we call from Hawaii.
And it was never my dad's ambition or dream to sell products outside of Hawaii.
He was very proud and uncomfortable, but with this customer's inquiry and the customer wanting to bring Sun Noodle to the mainland, that opened up our door in the next chapter.
And when we went to start shipping products to California, the cost to send something frozen was just cost prohibitive for any buyer on the mainland.
And so that's when we started to work with the distributor to consolidate products out of Hawaii, store it in California, and then get it to several customers on the West Coast.
So when you moved to the West Coast in California, did you start off with a distributor, or did you have to collect a critical mass of accounts in order to bring a distributor on?
Yeah, so when we opened our California facility, it was in 2004.
My father was setting up meetings with some of the larger Japanese food distributors to ask to carry Sun Noodle.
And all of them said, well, we can carry your products, but you'll be our number two or number three.
You know, we already have our number one supplier and you could be the backup.
And so I think he took that as, okay, well, thank you.
I'll be your backup.
But we have so much pride in what we do.
We have so much pride and confidence in the noodles that we make for some of the best restaurants that out of necessity, we had to do DSD out of our facility in Southern California.
So we would take the same playbook from Hawaii.
We put it in California.
We would make noodles and we deliver them directly to to restaurants that would give us a chance.
And that I think word of mouth of getting that five ramen shops, the 10 ramen shops, the 15, 20, that critical mass started to grow word of mouth.
And that's when I think the distributors started to actually come back to Sun and say, hey, you know, we're hearing about you guys from the restaurants.
Maybe we should set up a meeting and talk about carrying your products.
And that's kind of how it started for us in the journey of the early 2000s of our operations.
Was that in the Prius?
That wasn't a Scion.
So it's not like so you you really I mean, it was a pretty scrappy operation.
You're using your car to deliver the noodles.
And then how were you collecting feedback?
So, you know, if you were the number two or number three competitor brand, how did you collect feedback to figure out what would take you up a notch or two so that you were directly competing with the number one?
Yeah, and I think that, you know, we were probably during that part of our company was that ramen shops were not abundant of how, you know, they look today.
But there was critical mass in like Little Tokyo of Los Angeles or Little Osaka, Torrance, California.
And you could see that they were starting to have new ramen shops opening, whether they're coming from Japan or just locally owned and operated.
And before we got into the market, every ramen shop had a very unique either soup or style or dish.
But my father had mentioned that all the noodles were the same.
You could go to the ramen shop in Torrance, next door, there's another shop and soups would be completely different, but the noodles were all the same.
And he felt like, wow, we could come in here and do something where we can really create and craft noodles that would complement that chef's soup or that dish, and maybe elevate it in some ways to be their own bespoke products.
And so that's what we brought.
That's what we did.
And I think that probably caught the eye of other restaurants and said, hey, could you come in and make our special noodles?
Or could you come and do something different for us?
And that really spread throughout Southern California.
And slowly, through luck, one of the distributors decided that they were going to part ways with their noodle supplier, and they called on Sun Noodle to ask if we could come in and be their number one vendor for them.
So creating specialty noodles sounds like such a winning opportunity for the restaurants.
But for Sun Noodle, that gets to be quite complicated, especially as you're growing accounts.
I guess my first question is, how did you handle that with your distributor?
I think you said that at some point, you had 400 different SKUs.
I know that that was probably after you had more manufacturing facilities in the Upper United States.
One, I think it was a necessity to get our name there in front of the chefs.
But through that process, we opened up the category and we had about 400 different items that we were making out of a California facility that was getting increasingly more difficult to manage, even harder for our distributors to carry and be efficient.
So, but, you know, through that creativity, we had about 400 skews in the food service.
So how did you sort of balance out the skews that the distributor carried versus the ones that you were delivering in a scion?
Well, the it's been evolving.
We were trying to get better at it.
At one point, one of our main distributors had 60 skews, and it was way too difficult for them to handle.
It was hard for us to manage if it got to a certain volume.
But at one point, these distributors had 60 different items of ramen noodles.
And so we've been more, I think, focused, is that on the DSD side of our business, where we manage our distribution locally for the markets of New York City, New Jersey, or California, is we would have a bit more skews because they're smaller runs and it's a local market that we can service a very bespoke noodle.
But for our distribution partners, it was to be more efficient and even allowing them to not get too crazy with too many skews.
And so we really cap it for distributors between 10 and 15.
Very, very different products, but all very good in whatever application that the chef is looking to use it for.
So it sounds like the feedback that you got from chefs kind of helped you figure out what innovation needed to happen from a product perspective.
Was there anything that you heard or understood from your distribution partners that helped you sort of smooth out the business in that regard?
In terms of, I think, that process, it's a lot of, I think, communication.
And it's not always easy when you're going to either rationalize your skew list or discontinue an item.
But we took it as an approach for a few things.
What used to be a value add of adding this spoke system for chefs started to become more of a challenge as we were not delivering on the expectations that they were expecting.
And so as we were proud that we could flex our muscle and make different products, it was, well, how much of that is so different from the core items?
And so we've really gone through a process where if they're very similar in the noodles that we had in the core item list that we've selected, we'd ask them for their understanding to consolidate into this one product.
And we would save and pass on any cost savings to them.
If we're going to be more efficient, we'd pass them on to them.
The lead time from ordering a core item versus a customized noodles was two times longer.
And so we said we'd get products to you faster.
We'd always have an inventory should you spike up or down.
And then the pricing was going to be more favorable.
So that was happening during COVID.
I think that might have helped where people just needed really good products and didn't have to be something so bespoke.
And I think that timing for the past, it's been three years on this journey.
And we're down to about 100 food service noodle items today between the two locations.
Wow, that's quite the slimming down.
That's amazing.
So in order to figure out which...
Because this is something that so many brands in their growth phase need to, and are kind of faced to figure out, you have so many SKUs because in some ways, you're trying to figure out what the right product market fit is and what's really going to stick.
So you approach SKU rationalization by checking in both with your food service, like your recipients, the restaurants, and with your distribution partners.
Was there any pushback?
Were there any restaurants who were like, no, I need my specialty noodle even if...
How did you deal with any of that?
I think COVID might have helped in many ways, because if we were to honor the customized noodles that they were looking for, it was such a long lead time for us to be able to create those products because there was just so much more demand on just getting products into distribution.
There was just more kind of urgency to get products into the stores.
And we had to be, as any other company during that time, had to be just focused on the things that are the products that don't stop the line from operating.
And so I think that really helped in the conversation, is asking them for their understanding during this period.
But I would say, let's go back to the 600 SKUs.
I mean, some of them were only different by half an ounce in portion weight, or pack size, or little things that maybe wasn't nice to have, but probably in the thick of things wasn't needed to have, or if the customer was going to actually pay a premium for those things.
Certainly wasn't always easy, but we kind of knew early on that the core business was to get really good noodles to the majority of our customers.
And if that meant that we would have to discontinue some products and we may lose some business, we'll shrink a little bit, but we'll grow in the long run.
And I think we understood that kind of going in.
And now that we do have a system now, and now things are actually moving really efficiently, we do have now the luxury of going back to some of the key partners and asking them, hey, did you want to bring that product back?
Or is there something that you want to create together?
Because we do have some of that opportunity today.
And so, yeah, I think we're better fit today for that.
In terms of slowing down the lead times, how much were you able to shave off by decreasing your SKU count?
Four weeks.
And so in the worst period, it was the lead times were eight to 10 weeks.
And we're getting that down to four weeks for a distributed fee order today.
Within 21 days, you'll get the products from Sun Noodle.
And also in terms of your ingredient costs and order management and everything like that, I have to believe that you saw some serious improvements there as well.
Yeah, we see probably on the back end from our from ops team, a lot more simplified, less inefficiency across the order processing to even ingredient sourcing.
And it just made everyone's job a lot more efficient.
So now that you've done such a great job with hue rationalization, if you have a chef, if you know, David Chang comes to you, does it have to be David Chang who comes to you and says, hey, listen, I want the noodle to be made of this ingredient?
Like, how do you decide who gets priority in terms of the specialty noodles?
Yeah, Melissa, I think we're still working, you know, what that may look like, because the fortunate thing for us is that we do actually get these opportunities and we don't take that for granted.
But we want to have this process in place.
I think we're getting better at it, but I'll start with maybe one is, who is that customer that we're talking to about this potential, you know, new product?
We've, we really believe that chefs like Dave, Dave Chang or others, I have an organ here in New York, or, you know, just just a lot of chefs, whether, you know, if you're calling in from Austin, Tatsuya, a lot of these groups who actually have this vision of bringing Kraft Ramen to the US.
That's really one of the things that Sun Noodle is looking to accomplish is bringing this culture of ramen here in the US that creates this movement where we can create styles of ramen here in the US that you can only enjoy if you come and visit that city or that restaurant.
And so that takes a little bit of both ends from our side is crafting a noodle that's very, very unique, but also from the chef side of the restaurant operator side to think about what that's going to look like.
I would say we start there first is what is that?
What is that vision?
The volume in many ways, it could be big, it could be small.
I don't think that's something that we really are hard on.
And then third is, again, it just goes back to that relationship is what would that look like in the future.
And so we do have conversations now where chefs are ready to or has that breathing room to be a little bit more innovative again, now that hopefully things are settled.
But there's not like a dollar amount that you have to hit immediately, or there's not something that a commitment on volume that has to happen.
It's really listening to that chef, that restaurant operator, and where they think about this craft ramen movement that we're focused on.
I think that one of the criteria you shared with me is that the product has to be irresistible.
It's not sort of a set of numbers, it's something a little bit more esoteric than that.
Exactly.
Yeah, and something that other eaters and consumers would be excited about to enjoy.
But to your point, we want to make sure that at least there's a meaningful aspect of doing something like this moving forward.
Otherwise, we'd just be back at 600 skews again, and then we'd have to kind of have that pain point again, and that wouldn't be fun for anyone.
No, certainly not you or your distributors.
You brought up another example of how you innovated a product.
It was during the pandemic when so much other evolution was happening for Sun Noodle.
Could you talk a little bit about the noodle product that you developed with Baystate Milling during the pandemic and how that came about and why?
Yeah, and I could probably talk to two things with the pandemic is prior to 2020, no ramen shop thought of ever doing takeout ramen.
And so we've never been asked to make anything of that sort.
And obviously, when that happened, we all had to shift gears.
And we know we had operated a concept called Ramen Lab in New York City.
And Ramen Lab was our store where we would invite chefs to pop up every month from all over the country, all over Japan, and to introduce to people in New York City, different styles of ramen.
So when the pandemic happened, we shut that down and we converted that into a test kitchen.
We wanted to put ourselves in the shoes of restaurant operators and see what this menu change and just this behavior change is, how do we make really good ramen that can be either for delivery or for takeout or something to microwave?
And so during that process, we had to create a noodle that could withstand soup over time, but also be able to be delivered and microwaved and have that deliver on that beautiful flavor and texture that you would expect of a ramen noodle.
And so a higher protein noodle that we would have never imagined to make until this time.
And so what the lab did for us is put ourselves in the shoes, go through some processes, and then we would share those learnings with all the restaurants that we worked with to say, hey, if this works for you, please try to implement it.
We would always try to see what could work for the pandemic.
The other part was with big state milling, which I know that you guys are very well aware of is a family operated company that mills wheat here in the US.
And through a connection, we were introduced to their team that does Health Sense, which they're looking to develop a flour that has a higher fiber content that you would only get traditionally using whole wheat flour.
But they had this special wheat that they were able to mill that delivered on everything on taste, texture, but with a better health conscience.
And I think that we were getting from samples from them, it had a nice texture, and then egg prices were increasing across the board, which is tough for everyone.
And just kind of thinking, how do we create a noodle that has the right texture without the expensive pricing from from egg?
And we just thought about, OK, why don't we blend some of this health sense flour that was delivering on fiber, reformulate that with noodles.
And that came to become something that some of the best restaurants and ramen shops that we work with had approved.
In terms of quality and texture and flavor.
And it's been really amazing to see that kind of innovation happen because of certain challenges that we were facing.
But the Bay State Milling team, what a fun group to work with.
They sent their R&D team and their QA team to work with us together.
And so now we have used some of their flour for innovation in replacing some of the egg whites, but also creating new products that are just higher in fiber content that some of our partners were asking for.
We couldn't deliver because in the past, using whole wheat at that amount was just creating a very unpleasant texture in noodles.
But with this new wheat that they were able to get their hands on or delivering again on everything that you would look for and expect for in a Sun Noodle product with the added fiber, that's good for people.
When we were waiting to hop on the Community Call, you were talking about Sun Noodle as a 43-year-old startup, and this is such a good example of that, and it really kind of shows all of us how you just continue to innovate, even though you've been at what you're doing for so long.
And because of that, I'm sure it's opened up so many other doors.
For example, Whole Foods Market, could you tell us a little bit about how you landed in Whole Foods Market due to a couple of the foragers, I think, eating the noodles in a restaurant in New York, is that right?
Exactly.
And whether it's the California story or the New Jersey story, and now we're talking about Whole Foods, I think we at Sun have always been really fortunate with these opportunities.
And so for the Whole Foods opportunity, it was LA Truesdale and John Lawson, who were the foragers for the Northeast region.
And in 2015, they were eating at a bunch of ramen shops and the ones that they loved.
They realized that they were sourcing from Sun Noodle and that's how we got connected is they reached out and asked if we'd be interested in creating some fresh ramen kits that their consumers could make at home and enjoy some of that delicious ramen, the quality of ramen experience in their home kitchens.
And that's really how it started.
Me being from Hawaii and getting a call from Whole Foods while I'm trying to build a business on New Jersey, that was just a no brainer that I'd say yes to it.
We didn't know what we're doing, but I just said yes to it and then thought we'd figure it out as we go.
And so that was an opportunity.
We were already selling, call it CPG or ramen kits in ethnic retailers, H Mart, Mitsuwa, of the Japanese grocery stores and 99 Ranch Market.
And so we did have some experience in creating ramen kits that had fresh noodles and a soup base or a sauce base.
What we had to do was figure out how do we bring some of those products and reformulate it so that the whole food stands out.
And then we had some vendors we met and then in some packaging so that it could sit on the shelf.
And that was kind of the work that we did within the first 9 to 12 months after getting the opportunity from John and Nellie.
What were some of those changes that you made for Whole Foods?
A lot of it was on the ingredients and the sourcing.
And so a lot of our products back then had ingredients that you couldn't use in the Whole Foods list of bad ingredients.
And so we went back to the drawing board and really reformulating the ingredients that could be used, but always making sure that we would never skimp on the quality or the taste of the product.
We always wanted to make sure that the flavor would deliver.
We always wanted to make sure that that umami that you would call it or the experience of eating a really good fresh noodle was going to be achieved with the ingredients that was approved from Whole Foods.
So that was probably the one challenge that we had in front of us.
And then the second part was the packaging or the messaging.
And I gotta give kudos to our team that's done the repackaging or rebranding for us that just launched at Expo because it's so much better and it's so much more beautiful than what I had created in 2015.
But I think at the heart of it, like that process, as I mentioned, I think we just feel like we're still a startup.
We're learning as we go and we have all these learnings and as we do these things.
But that was the first step into Whole Foods was the packaging and the ingredients that we deliver.
The new packaging is absolutely gorgeous.
It's beautiful.
I was so excited to see it.
With something like that, are you going back and forth with the Whole Foods team?
I mean, I know they're busy and they can be certainly tough to get a hold of because there are so many vendors.
How do you go back and forth to get it to the final rightness?
That's probably been a process even for me to learn because we're still, Sun Noodle is still 90% food service.
And even in the other packaged products that we make, we don't touch them after we've brought a new packaging.
And so for this channel, we worked with an agency called Drone Agency out of Oregon, who just really understood our story.
We are very, very fortunate where Claire at Whole Foods or John are very open to and unwilling to give us feedback.
And we also have a great network of people that we can share what we're looking at and getting their advice.
And so putting all those inputs in, we and the team will kind of figure out what actually still feels good with Sun Noodle.
But we also knew that we had to push the boundaries a bit on this packaging because we perform really well in the Northeast, and we perform really well in SOPAC for Whole Foods.
We have factories there, we have personnel there, we have resources in those regions.
So even if the packaging didn't work as well, we get in there and do some demo taste things or get out there and talk to the consumers.
But once we went global about 18 months ago, that's where we realized we could certainly work on the packaging to make it work harder for the brand, but it will deliver on the quality once that consumer cooks it and tastes it.
And so that was the journey.
But we also knew that for me, I had to be a little bit uncomfortable with the changes.
But if I was going to be uncomfortable, that means that we're on the right track.
That means we're doing something different.
And I got to give kudos to our team that did it really within, I think they did it within six months.
And they came up with that beautiful packaging that it's starting to hit some stores.
I saw that in Whole Foods in New York.
I think it hits on everything that we want it to do.
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
It absolutely is.
So we've talked a little bit.
We've talked about how you gather feedback from your food service clients, your distributors, your retailers.
And now that you have a product that's ready for the home consumer, I know that it's not the first time that it's had retail placement, but probably reaching more households than you had before.
How do you collect feedback from the home user?
So we don't have anything official, and we don't have a DTC website or anything like that.
But I got to be really lucky and say that we get a lot of feedbacks and inbound emails or things on social media through the DM of really a lot of honest, whether it's feedback or criticism on the products, directly to our emails.
And so while we don't have much of a funnel of things coming in, we do get a lot of consumer call-out feedback or love through our emails, through our social media, through our DMs, and we take that to heart.
We'll get a lot of those and we'll put it together.
Another thing that we do, and we've been very much intentional, is we get out to the stores and we do a lot of indoor demos, and as we're sampling products, the one thing that we're looking for immediately is their reaction, their facial reaction.
Do they love it?
Is there something off tasting about it?
What's their facial reaction?
And then asking them, how do they feel about the product?
Is it something that they would want to share with their loved ones?
And those kinds of conversations for us is how we're really trying to be scrappy about getting the feedback and then formulating some next steps from what we've learned from the insights there.
I know we're still in early stages, but is there any insight you've gotten from consumers, whether it's at the demos or through emails, that kind of thing that you thought was particularly interesting?
And while ramen shops are expanding throughout the country, we are realizing that there are a lot of other consumers or potential customers that are converting from instant ramen to art kits because they don't have access to a ramen shop near them.
And so what that is really getting to us is in terms of the new product innovation.
How can we bring more of that experience that they would have at a ramen shop into their house outside of just noodles and soup?
And so what does that product look like?
And I think we'll see some of that hit the store shelves hopefully very, very soon.
But that's the kind of feedback that we're getting from customers and then trying to be a solution to them in ways that Sun Noodle can deliver it.
So exciting.
It sounds like there's certainly more innovation ahead of you then.
Yeah, and I would say it's such a blessing that we have retailer partners that would allow us to have some space on the shelf to test these things.
And that to me is a dream of a partnership, is where a retailer is invested in giving you that space to trial and learn.
And hopefully that the consumer would find some excitement and purchase those products for their homes.
Really great stuff.
I think that your longevity and your success is such an inspiration.
One last question for you.
What gets you up in the morning?
What's your favorite thing about being the president of Sun Noodle?
This is a family business.
It's something that I grew up watching my parents work hard for.
And again, I go back to the dream that my father had and my mother.
It was do well for Hawaii and be content there.
As my sister Hisai and I joined the company, they realized that if we just stayed in Hawaii, it wouldn't be maybe as challenging because they've done such a good job.
And so they took the risk to open up the business to become on the mainland.
And I think that for us, the joy is a few things, is that we're making the dream of something even bigger as we expand to here on the mainland and as we've operated in Europe.
And then the second thing is my dad's always been fortunate that the Hawaii community has helped him build his vision and values of the business.
But we always talk about ohana, and ohana means family in Hawaiian.
And we have our ohana today is over 300 people.
And what keeps me up or what gets me excited in the morning is getting to work with a lot of people that we have today and seeing them really develop and grow.
And we have people that's been with us for decades, you know, 30 years, 20 years, and seeing them go from what they were to where they are today, that probably has to make me the most excited and probably the one that keeps me energized to continue to work together with our team.
Kenshiro Uki of Sun Noodle, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you.
Thank you so much for your time today.
For everybody else, you can watch a recording of this call at bevnet.com/communitycall.
You can sign up for future calls there as well.
And we'll see you next time.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call podcast.
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