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

those of Silk Soymilk.” Address: President, White Wave Inc.,
1990 North 57th Court, Boulder, Colorado 80301.
1171. Demos, Steve. 1999. New developments with tofu
at White Wave (Interview). SoyaScan Notes. Feb. 24.
Conducted by William Shurtleff of Soyfoods Center.
• Summary: Last December White Wave fi nished installing
truly automated equipment at their tofu factory. They
fi nalized the Takai system that does the curding and
pressing–using a boxless, clothless pressing system, with
a matching carrousel, press table, and input feed. “Being
the slow learner I am, it took me two decades to put this
all together, but it now burps out 9 pounds of tofu every
17 seconds.” The total tofu production system is made up
of subsystem components built on American innovation.
It combines pasteurization and cooling systems that White
Wave invented, cooking and extraction systems that both
Bean Machines and some other extractors put together, but
the heart and soul of the tofu production system is the last
part–from Takai. It is now a continuous-fl ow system where
no person touches beans or any part of the process until
they put the fi nished block of tofu in the package at the end.
It runs at 1,000 pounds of dry beans per hour–just making
tofu. “It rumbles and roars–I just love to get up out of mu
chair and watch it run.” People watch the system but nobody
touches or handles anything, or makes any adjustments.
Starting with wet beans, they are automatically delivered,
transferred, ground, cooked, extracted, curdled, pressed, cut,
rinsed, leached of coagulant, and delivered to the packing
machines. About 50% is vacuum packaged and 50% is water
packed; this part has not yet been automated, but they are
close. Eventually the only manual operation will be putting
the sealed packages of tofu in a 12-pack carton.
Steve was recently given a tour of the House Foods
tofu plant in southern California. The two companies don’t
compete with one another, and they are exploring some joint
projects. “They sell a commercial variety of Asian-style tofu,
and we sell what we call ‘Honkey-Fu;’ its just not Asianstyle
tofu–much fi rmer with a different mouthfeel. Steve
took Shoan Yamauchi through White Wave 15 years ago. Mr.
Yamauchi was able to ship his tofu nationally in part because
most supermarket produce routes originate in California.
White Wave’s identity and focus is presently on Silk
Soymilk and Silk spoonable desserts (not only yogurt), and
tofu under the White Wave brand. The company’s major
focus on tofu is baked fl avored tofu–which has a much larger
market than most people realize. The growth rate and the
consumer acceptance of baked tofu is remarkable! We have a
heavy commitment to developing this category. “We believe
that tofu will be, to a large extent, a snack food. Dairy yogurt
entered the U.S. market as a product that is eaten on a park
bench at 11:30 in the morning. The consumer accepted
this product as a lifestyle issue–we want to be healthy (eat
healthy benefi ts foods), eat outdoors, and eat small meals.
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 450
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So yogurt kind of entered on that park bench. Even to this
day, it’s perceived as a light meal for health benefi ts. That’s
how White Wave would like to position baked tofu–as a
grazer’s food with very big potential.” A closely related
product is smoked tofu; White Wave is now installing smoke
houses, and one will be fi red up for the fi rst time next week.
According to SPINS data, White Wave has 60+ percent of
the fl avored tofu market in the USA and 31% of the total
national block tofu + fl avored tofu market–measured on a
dollar basis. Even though Nasoya or Morinaga outsells White
Wave in units, White Wave outproduces them in revenues.
White Wave is the only company that has been willing or
smart enough to make the large investment in equipment
required to make baked or smoked tofu economically; the
company has devoted almost $1 million to developing
the fl avored tofu category. Smoke and Fire, Wildwood,
and Quong Hop all have good, innovative fl avored tofu
products, but none of them have devoted the capital to meet
huge tonnage. White Wave will always make and sell block
tofu, but Steve doesn’t care if he never sells another block
of tofu–except for his own consumption. He want to sell
convenience-oriented, fl avored tofu products. We want to sell
value-added products–and “we will not be oversold! If your
prices are higher than ours, we will raise ours to match or
beat you! It’s just good old American greed.”
White Wave’s total revenues and tonnage continue to
grow a very healthy rate. “For us, a bad year is less than
30%. After 21 years, I’ve gotten used to riding on the back
of a tiger.” We are predicting 50% or more growth rate for
the entire company in 1999. Address: President, White Wave
Inc., 1990 North 57th Court, Boulder, Colorado 80301.
1172. Demos, Steve. 1999. New developments with Silk
Soymilk and related products at White Wave. Company
growth rates. Looking for one large investor (Interview).
SoyaScan Notes. Feb. 24. Conducted by William Shurtleff of
Soyfoods Center.
• Summary: Despite all the exciting new developments
with tofu at White Wave, Silk Soymilk is the company’s
fl agship product; it is number one in both units sold and
revenues earned. “Silk is our grand slam.” Silk is now
labeled as “lactose-free soymilk.” The word “milk” has a
strong positive connotation and this makes it clear that Silk
is an alternative for milk. “Silk has everything that milk
has except for the ‘milk’ part. James Terman came up with
that one!” White Wave tries to fortify Silk Soymilk to be
nutritionally equivalent to cow’s milk.
The FDA has under review (even though they have
tabled it) a petition submitted by the Soyfoods Association
to legalize the word “soymilk” on product labels. As long as
the word “soymilk” is being reviewed by the FDA, White
Wave can legally use that word on their products. The FDA
cannot make White Wave drop the word unless and until
they pass a negative ruling on it–and then White Wave would