After locking up our co-packer with an agreement not to share our recipe, we began the process of converting our “kitchen size” recipe to a “commercial size” one. But it wasn’t going to be as simple as multiplying.
First, while they were able to use the brands we were used to for some ingredients, for other [...]
Category Archive for ‘Our Story’ 
Food Math? How a 30 oz Teriyaki Sauce Recipe Becomes a 300 Gallon Recipe
Finding a Co-Packer To Make Our Teriyaki Sauce
This country never ceases to amaze me. There are entrepreneurs and businesses out there that do all kinds of things. I figured there were a few companies out there that could bottle our sauce but I had no idea just how many. There were companies of all sizes that do just that, [...]
Truly Hawaiian lands its first BIG gourmet grocery chain account
Our first cutting took place on April 10, 2009. Within two weeks we had a deal to begin selling our sauce. The Fresh Market (based in Greensboro NC, with over 90 locations in the eastern US and as far west as Louisiana and Illinois) would become the first store to carry Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce.
In [...]
What’s a cutting anyway?
In layman’s terms, a “cutting” in the food industry is when a vendor brings samples of his wares to the buyers to, well, sample. In our case, we planned an elaborate mix of some of our favorite teriyaki dishes to show off our sauce. The menu consisted of chicken, spare ribs (my personal favorite!), vegetable [...]
Major Chain Interested in Start-up Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce
In February of 2009, as my son and his soccer team began preparing for their spring season, one of the other dads, a corporate level decision maker for a large grocery chain (yes, I’ll reveal their identity soon!), and myself began preparing a team of our own. It would be a team that would hopefully [...]