In 1980, Minh Tsai’s parents told him they were going on a family vacation.
It wasn’t until they were on the boat that his parents confessed that they were leaving their home country of Vietnam. They were headed to a refugee camp in Malaysia and subsequently made it to the United States.
After achieving the “American Dream,” earning a master’s degree from Columbia University and working in investment banking, Tsai decided to start a food business called Hodo Foods. Inspired by the flavors he grew up with, Tsai started making authentic tofu and selling it at a farmer’s market stand in San Francisco, Calif., U.S.A.
Twenty years later, Tsai is known as the “Tofu Disruptor,” making one of the most sought-after tofu brands in the United States. He’s even collaborated with Chipotle to create the famous plant-powered vegan option, Sofritas — made with Hodo’s extra-firm tofu.
For Tsai, having spent part of his youth in Vietnam, food has been one of his great loves. Southeast Asian food in particular is an amalgam of South Asian food and East Asian food.
“The culture there is buy every day, go to the wet market, the farmer’s market. So that’s how I grew up,” he says.
Once he was settled in the U.S. as a teenager and in subsequent years after, Tsai discovered that he missed that type of food.
“The majority of my credit card bill, over 90%, was actually on food,” he says. That’s what led him to the food business.
“I was thinking, ‘OK, I love food,'” he adds. “I spend a lot of money on food. Food is more recession-proof. So at least that’s how I got into this business in the first place.”
Tsai says it was a “silly idea” to try to make a tofu that he grew up eating and loving.
“Super silly if you think about it, but I got lucky in that it happened at the right time and the right place, and so time and place played a significant role in the success of Hodo Foods,” he adds.
GROWING UP IN A NEW COUNTRY
Like with many immigrants, it was very difficult for Tsai in the beginning because he didn’t speak the language and missed his extended family back in Vietnam.
“There was a lot of crying, initially,” he says. “The first year was very challenging, being in an [English as a Second Language] class, living in sort of a neighborhood that’s not friendly to outsiders.”
Despite those challenges, Tsai was able to find a community while growing up in San Francisco, Calif., U.S.A. that allowed him to blossom academically.
“I feel very lucky,” he says. “I still believe that there are no countries that I’m aware of that allow anyone to reinvent themselves as much as in the United States. So I’m a testament to that. I’ve had so many careers and I might have more careers coming.”
TO ASSIMILATE OR NOT TO ASSIMILATE
Like many immigrant families, Tsai’s parents didn’t want to keep a lot of Vietnamese traditions because they wanted him to assimilate as quickly as possible.
“Essentially, outside of the Lunar New Year and gatherings with friends around that time, we didn’t really keep a lot of the traditions that I grew up with, like Autumn Moon Festival and any of those sort of festivals and celebrations,” he says.
I still believe that there are no countries that I’m aware of that allow anyone to reinvent themselves as much as in the United States.
One thing that Tsai’s family did keep pretty consistent is that all the meals were — and still are — “massive and epic.”
“It’s like, big families, lots of friends, lots of drinking and a ton of food — really, really good food,” he says. “So that tradition remains to this day.”
CLASS EXPOSURE
Tsai says he was “very fortunate” to be exposed to “so much when I first came to the United States,” in that he went from a school in a low-income neighborhood to a private school in a high-income neighborhood.
“That contrast was extreme, but also really wonderful from an exposure standpoint,” he says. Additionally, his parents sent him to a boarding school in the summers on the U.S. East Coast.
That exposure — from low-income kids to the “blue-blood” children of global leaders — helped him navigate many different settings and classes, according to Tsai.
“So that, to me, is probably one of the reasons I was able to navigate Hodo as well,” he adds. “It’s really understanding what American consumers want from this Asian food, this Asian ingredient. I think of all of my life exposure really helped me create these products and the company.”
STARTING HODO FOODS
Tsai say his main goal when he started his company was simply “to show people what tofu was.”
He grew up in San Francisco during the era known as the “Farm to Table movement,” where consumers really wanted to know where their food came from. It was the time of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “Food Rules” author Michael Pollan and culinary entrepreneur John Scharffenberger.
“So for me, I was just like, OK, people have no clue what tofu is, where it came from, and the tofu at the time, and still is to this day, it’s still subpar,” according to Tsai. “So I was just like, I love tofu. I’m gonna show anybody who’s interested how to make tofu, what it is. I’m just really gonna be an open kimono about it.”
Fortunately for Tsai, the farmer’s markets in San Francisco were the right place — not just for potential customers but also because a lot of chefs went there.
“It was instant feedback for me,” he says.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Making tofu “yummy” tended to be the easiest thing for Tsai. The hard parts were on the business end, i.e. the logistics of refrigeration, or the permitting, or even the weather.
“I remember in the winter, I’m standing around for six hours and I’m selling like 80 bucks’ worth of tofu,'” he says. “Those were brutal days, but I think I had this attitude that I needed to be there because there’s these three customers that really love my stuff and they would be so bummed if I don’t show up, or this one chef that will come out and pick up some soy milk that I want to make sure I’m there for him.”
Over time, though, those relationships paid off.
Nowadays, when asked what he thinks success is when it comes to the food business, Tsai responds: “Stick around.”
“The longer you can stick around … eventually, somebody over time will find you and you can sustain yourself,” he says. “So that’s sort of how we sort of got lucky in that there were times where I’m like, ‘I should just throw in the towel.’
“But I thought, ‘You know what? [Let’s try] another year.’ And then something happened, a customer would come along and we’re like, oh wow, OK, we’re good now,” he says. “So that is really for me a combination of hard work, patience and luck.”
RETURNING TO VIETNAM
As an adult, Tsai has traveled back to Vietnam multiple times.
The longer you can stick around … eventually, somebody over time will find you and you can sustain yourself.
“It’s changed so much,” he says.
While plenty of mom-and-pop tofu shops still exist in Vietnam, Tsai was able to meet what he calls “the monopolist of tofu.”
The biggest tofu maker in Vietnam is a company owned by a woman who was a former Soviet engineer.
“So she’s Vietnamese. She went to the Soviet Union after the war, became an engineer there, and she took all that engineering skill and came back and built this massive, automated tofu plant,” he says.
When he goes back to Vietnam, Tsai knows he’s no longer completely a “local,” though.
While he may look like a local, dress like a local and still speaks Vietnamese, it’s his lack of familiarity with the current slang that makes him stand out.
“I sound like a foreigner,” he says. “Like, not from accent, but it just sounds funny when I talk. So they know right away: They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, you ain’t from around here. You must be from overseas.’ And I was like, busted! So I get that, but at least I don’t get ripped off, so I’m cool.”
