history of soy yogurt, soy acidophilus milk and other ... - SoyInfo Center

soy ice cream, and other dairy analogs. Address: Illinois.
710. INTSOY Newsletter (Urbana, Illinois). 1987. INTSOY
hosts visiting Chinese scientists. No. 36. July. p. 4.
• Summary: Engineer Jai-Kun Dai and asst. engineer Yuhong
Wu from the Inst. of Food and Fermentation Industries,
Ministry of Light Industry, Beijing, are spending 1 year
at the Univ. of Illinois. They are especially interested in
introducing new soymilk technology to China.
711. Product Name: Omegurt (Non-Dairy Soy Yogurt).
Manufacturer’s Name: Natural Ovens.
Manufacturer’s Address: P.O. Box 2137 (4300 Country
Rd.), Manitowac, WI 54221-2137. Phone: 414-758-2500.
Date of Introduction: 1987. July.
New Product–Documentation: News (Villa Grove,
Illinois). July 2. Rich in omega-3 fatty acids. University of
Illinois researchers say their soy yogurt -Soyghurt–will be
available for taste tests sometime in 1988.
Talk with Natural Ovens. They introduced the product
about 4 years ago but are no longer making it.
712. Rottenberg, David. 1987. Innocence lost: How Tom
Timmins, a son of the sixties, is turning tofu into the
keystone of an empire. Boston Magazine. July. p. 51-57.
• Summary: One of the best articles written on developments
during the 1980s for Tomsun Foods, Timmins (with two
large photos), Juan Metzger, and David Kirsch. Last year
Timmins sold $3.1 million of tofu. Jofu grossed nearly
$400,000 in its fi rst 32 weeks on the market. Jofu is now sold
in 11 fl avors, 5 honey sweetened. With the help of Evans &
Company, a New York City underwriting fi rm, Timmins took
Tomsun Foods public with a $4.25 million stock offering.
And he is pouring $1 million of new capital into a new
product, Jofu, a tofu-based “spoonable snack” resembling
yogurt. Timmins’ goal is a 7% share of the $1,000 million a
year U.S. yogurt market.
The company headquarters is now located at 247
Wells St. in Greenfi eld, Massachusetts. Seven employees
(including Timmins, who has 4 kids) work here, and another
68 work down the road at the factory–which uses more than
a million pounds of soybeans a year. Timmins notes: Our
product philosophy is completely vegetarian. Not because
we’re vegetarians–I’m not anymore–but that’s our niche,
that’s who we are.”
“One day in 1979 Juan Metzger, founder of Dannon
Yogurt, called Tom Timmins. Metzger, it seems, had
been intrigued by a Wall Street Journal article on tofu
that mentioned Timmins. Might be something in tofu for
Dannon, Metzger thought. Metzger had just achieved his
goal of national distribution of Dannon Yogurt. Now he was
thinking about expanding his product line. Would Timmins
be interested in selling soy dairy to Dannon? Metzger
wondered. Meetings were held and preliminary studies made.
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 265
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The plan was to have Timmins package tofu under both his
label and that of Dannon. Dannon would provide Timmins
with national distribution and, according to Metzger, ‘in 6 to
12 months, if we were still on friendly speaking terms and
the product showed promise, I would get Beatrice Foods
[Dannon’s parent company] to buy that company for Dannon
and make it a Dannon subsidiary and keep [Timmins] as
head man.’ In the end, however, Beatrice Foods nixed the
deal. It didn’t want its most profi table subsidiary sinking
money into a new and potentially risky venture. But during
the negotiations Metzger and Timmins discovered that,
although they were nearly 30 years apart in age, their goals
and thinking were similar.
“Two years later Beatrice sold Dannon for $84 million
to a French company, BSN-Gervais-Danone. Metzger quit
and joined forces with another food executive, his friend
David Kirsch, whose family had just sold its No-Cal softdrink
business to Canada Dry for over $75 million. They
formed a food consulting company they called Metzger,
Kirsch Associates.
“So when Timmins started thinking about taking his
company national, he called in Metzger, Kirsch, which
had just the kind of big-time expertise he needed. And in
1983 they struck a deal: Juan Metzger and David Kirsch
became Timmins’s partners. Instead of salaries, Metzger
and Kirsch each received approximately 13 percent of the
company’s stock, with Timmins retaining 22 percent. The
rest of the stock was distributed among other employees and
investors. Metzger became chairman of the board; Timmins
president and chief executive offi cer; and Kirsch, senior vice
president.”
“One of the fi rst big changes was in the name: New
England Soy Dairy, established by Timmins in 1978, became
Tomsun Foods in 1983.” They then set out to develop a
“spoonable snack” which, like yogurt, “permitted valueadded
pricing... And so the Dannon success story became the
paradigm for Tomsun.” They named the product Jofu, in part
since both Timmins and Metzger have young sons named
Joe. Now Tomsun Foods is making 11 fl avors of Jofu, 5 of
them sweetened with honey.
“The partners allocated a third of the $4.5 million raised
in their public stock offering last December to advertising.
Half a dozen radio commercials created by the New York
City advertising fi rm Calet, Hirsch and Spector are already
touting Jofu as a snack ‘beyond yogurt.” Tomsun is targeting
college students, who are thought to be more open to new
foods, and spoonable snacks suit the collegiate lifestyle.
“Jofu is now sold in about 80 supermarket chains in the
Northeast...” It is sold right next to the dairy yogurt. Now
Jofu is spawning imitators. Six other soyfoods companies,
including Brown Cow West, Bud, and Cream of the Bean,
already have yogurt-like tofu products in supermarkets, and
more are planning their own entries. “To date, Jofu is the
only yogurtlike food that is not cultured.”