Mentee Spotlight - Hodo Soy Beanery
Minh Tsai, owner Hodo Soy Beanery
Four years ago, Minh made the difficult decision to leave his professional career and start his own business – a dream he had since soon after he arrived in America from Vietnam in 1981.
“When I came to the U.S. at the age of 11, I immediately saw how hard my parents worked and made sacrifices for the family,” he says. “Their work ethic inspired me to seek out opportunity to learn, grow, and be independent. Starting a business for me is a natural extension of capitalizing on all the learning and growing I have done academically and professionally.”
His vision for the company – Hodo Soy Beanery – was simple: introduce the San Francisco Bay Area to a line of fresh organic tofu products with exceptional quality and flavor using sustainably farmed organic soy beans.
He knew emerging entrepreneurs faced great challenges, especially in the Bay Area. But he was determined to strategically grow his business by making smart decisions, finding a likeminded business partner, maintaining the high quality of products, cultivating loyal customers, hiring the best people – “tofu ambassadors,” and giving back to the community.
To do this, he knew he would need the help and support of successful local businesses. In 2008, he enrolled in the newly launched Oakland Entrepreneur Mentoring Program. “The program provided our business an opportunity not only to be mentored by more established companies in our area, but also opportunity for us to meet and learn from other start-ups going through growth as we are,” he says. The program matched him with mentor Reem Rahim, one of the founders of Numi Tea, who oversees the company’s marketing and public relations. “Though our businesses are different, Reem has provided us some valuable advice in determining our marketing/PR effort, particularly on how we can wisely spend money to increase sales,” Minh says. In summer 2008, Minh’s company opened its new 13,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in an Oakland Enterprise Zone. He has continued to hire employees from the local community.
