Contact:
Sam Kanakanui, Managing Partner
Truly Hawaiian, LLC
5710-K High Point Road, #165
Greensboro, NC 27407
Virginia@TrulyHawaiian.com
Phone: 800-928-4196

Hawaiian Teriyaki Burger Wins Prize for TFM customer from Asheville, NC

The Fresh Market recently completed its first ever Recipe Challenge and received over 250 submissions from its customers. The rules of the contest were simple: prepare a recipe using three of The Fresh Market’s private label products.

The top prize, Hawaiian Teriyaki Burger, was submitted by a lucky customer from Asheville, NC. Her winning recipe, which uses Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce, Anything Goes Spice Rub, and Panko Bread Crumbs, can be found online at www.TheFreshMarket.com.

“We’re thrilled to have Truly Hawaiian sauce featured in this winning recipe,” says Virginia Kanakanui, Marketing Director for Truly Hawaiian. “We have used Truly Hawaiian in many different ways over the years, and to have someone come up with a new recipe using our product is truly exciting. And the recipe tastes fantastic, too!”

Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce is an original Hawaiian family favorite recipe passed down for over 100 years in the Kanakanui Family. After sharing the sauce with family and friends to mark special occasions for many, many years, the Kanakanui Family launched Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce in 2008. Recommended as a marinade for steak, chicken, pork or ribs, the sauce can also be used as a gravy and poured directly onto already cooked food—grilled fish, stir-fry vegetables, tofu, or rice. Other recipes can be found at the Truly Hawaiian website, www.TrulyHawaiian.com.

Contact:
Sam Kanakanui, Managing Partner
Truly Hawaiian, LLC
5710-K High Point Road, #165
Greensboro, NC  27407
Virginia@TrulyHawaiian.com
Phone: 800-928-4196

Family recipe for more than 100 years to be carried in all The Fresh Market store locations.

Truly Hawaiian, a Greensboro, NC—based company, is bringing its first product to market through an agreement with The Fresh Market. A new teriyaki sauce, based on a Truly Hawaiian family recipe that’s more than 100 years old, will be private labeled for The Fresh Market as Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce and will be offered in all The Fresh Market store locations.

Truly Hawaiian, LLC, is the brainchild of four siblings in the Kanakanui family who learned the recipe from their father and grandfather. Sam Kanakanui has spearheaded the movement on behalf of the family to launch Truly Hawaiian. “We had been giving the sauce away as gifts for years and years,” says Sam. “And people would always come back and say, ‘Oh, let us know if you ever decide to bottle this, because I want to be your first customer!’ Finally, in late 2008, we started seriously considering marketing our family recipe.”

The family recipe for Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce has its roots in neighborhood gatherings in Honolulu in the early 1900s. Honolulu was an amalgam of different cultures and flavors at this time and under the shadow of Diamond Head, a mile from Waikiki Beach, a small neighborhood had regular “block parties” where the “ohana” (Hawaiian for families) would come together and share food, fellowship, and fun.

William A. “Bill” Kanakanui, who sometimes hosted music sing-a-longs at his home, was a regular contributor to the block parties. His special recipe for teriyaki sauce, handed down from his father, was a popular choice for marinating steak, chicken, and ribs. When cooked on a grill, the sauce would caramelize and provide a distinct smoky, yet sweet, flavor – “ono ono!”  (Hawaiian for absolutely delicious.)

Bill’s youngest son, Richard, took the recipe with him as he made his way to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.  Later, as he courted a girl in West Virginia, Richard introduced the recipe to his future in-laws and extended family. When asked if the West Virginians thought the sauce was “exotic,” Richard replied, “No, they just thought it was good!”
There were four Kanakanui children born to Richard and his wife, Judy. Photographs from the early 60s show the children enjoying teriyaki spareribs as prepared by their father.  As the children grew up and created their own lives from California to West Virginia and North Carolina, they all impressed their friends with this special family teriyaki recipe.  Spareribs in Los Angeles, steaks in West Virginia, chicken and ribs in North Carolina—and one of the constant comments was, “Wow, this sauce is great —why don’t you bottle it? I could drink it straight from the bottle!”

Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce will be available on The Fresh Market shelves beginning September 19th, 2009.
The sauce is recommended as a marinade for steak, chicken, pork or ribs. It can also be used as a glaze and  poured directly onto already cooked food—grilled fish, stir-fry vegetables, tofu, or rice. Other recipes can be found at the Truly Hawaiian website, www.TrulyHawaiian.com.

First, while they were able to use the brands we were used to for some ingredients, for other ingredients they were not.  If you’ve done much cooking with spices, you probably know that they differ slightly from brand to brand.  Next time you are at the store, compare cinnamon or garlic powder from different brands.  You may notice that they have a slightly different shade or a different granular consistency.  Using a teaspoon of either in a recipe, you might not notice a difference in taste.  But when you multiply that by 30,000, the difference becomes exaggerated and you notice a BIG taste difference.

This meant we would have to alter our kitchen recipe slightly in order to get the taste to match our homemade recipe that all our friends and family have come to know and love.  So, we would enlist those same friends and family to help us test each batch that came back from the co-packer.

Hmmm, free teriyaki samples?  They were lining up at our door to become part of our taste testing team!

It did take quite a few modifications and, with each iteration, a taste testing with our friends.  The formula was tweaked a little bit each time, but we finally got it where we wanted it.  It was a product we would be proud to call Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki Sauce.

What’s more, it was a product my dad would be proud to serve his family and friends.  And that was important to us.

OK, so the formula was ready, we just needed an order to get started.  But how much would they order?  Would we start with our gallon size for the Meat and Seafood counter or our 12 oz retail bottle?  At our next meeting with The Fresh Market, that decision was made for us.

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We decided on Braswell’s Foods in Statesboro, GA.  They were the right size for us and could handle the smaller quantities we would need starting out.  When I say small quantities, I mean they would be making our sauce in 300 gallon batches.  That was a bit more than we were able to make in our kitchen!

Once we decided on Braswell’s we immediately begin the process of transferring our recipe that made about 30 ounces to their process that would make 300 gallons at a time.  So, just multiply each measurement, right?  Not so easy…

In my next post, we learn food math, and why multiplying a teaspoon by 30,000 just doesn’t work.