It's very early in the morning on the U.S. West Coast when Terence Chen, general manager of Taiwanese trading company THL Group, finally finds some time for an interview via video call. Chen is currently busy negotiating with distributors in the United States.

In a few hours, he is scheduled to visit a Costco in the Los Angeles region to present Taiwanese foods to the hypermarket’s snack buyers.

THL is Taiwan’s leading distributor of fast-moving consumer goods. Ovaltine, Haribo Goldbears, and Energizer batteries are just a few examples of international brands that THL introduced to Taiwan. Chen is part of the second generation of the founding family.

“The market for Asian packaged food is booming in America, Taiwan is a latecomer,” says Chen.

Over the past ten years, the amount spent by American buyers on Taiwanese agricultural products, including processed foods, has nearly doubled. In 2021, Taiwan's farm exports to the US surpassed those to Japan. Last year, the US became the largest destination for Taiwanese agricultural exports, surpassing China. While farm exports to the United States couldn't compensate for lost exports to China, they reached US$29 million in 2022.

Reshuffle of Leading Export Products

In the past, Taiwan’s farmers mainly exported fresh fruit and seafood to China. In 2019, before China imposed various import bans, the five leading export items were baked goods, grouper, pineapples, tea leaves, and sugar apples.

The best-selling agricultural exports to the United States in 2022 were baked goods, moth orchids, tapioca starch - the raw material for the tapioca pearls in bubble milk tea - sweetmeats, and wheat foods. Only moth orchids belong to the Class A agriculture category, whereas the remaining export hits are processed foods.

While Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian noodles have long taken root in the U.S., Taiwan's dry noodles have risen to prominence in the past few years, attracting health-conscious consumers despite a slightly more complicated cooking process. (Source: Shengrui Luo)

Chen says selling foodstuffs to China has become more difficult. On the other hand, the United States is favoring Taiwan, and acceptance of Asian foods is growing. Some five years ago, he had the idea to take Taiwanese foods to a new continent.

The 32-year-old Chris Yu was born in Taiwan and immigrated to New York with his parents at age 11. He runs a food truck business with two other Asian-Americans in Midtown Manhattan, selling pork ribs with rice. Meanwhile, the trio has opened a Taiwanese restaurant in Long Island called Yumpling.

Yu observes that as Asian-Americans move to the Greater New York area, more restaurants offering modern Asian cuisine such as omakase sushi and refined Korean dishes are springing up.

The Asian dishes served there are not necessarily authentic, but they are popular. The dumplings, braised pork rice, and beef noodle soup at Yumpling preserve the Taiwanese spirit, but food presentation and plating techniques have been adjusted to please the typical New Yorker. Asian Americans account for only a minority of the restaurant’s patrons.

Rising Asian-American Minority Equals Taiwan’s Population

Terrence Chen, CEO of THL food service. (Source: THL)

The rapidly increasing Asian-American community in the United States is behind the craze for Asian food. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Asian-American population has risen by 81 percent to 24 million people, accounting for 7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the nonpartisan fact tank Pew Research Center. With these numbers, they represent a market as big as Taiwan. On top of that, Asian-Americans have the highest median household income of all population groups.

Over the past decade, food imports from Asia, including Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan, have posted explosive growth. While food imports from Taiwan were the smallest in monetary terms, they registered a growth rate of 172 percent over the past 10 years.

Currently, the most popular taste of Taiwan in the United States is bubble milk tea, but dry noodle dishes promise the greatest potential.

Young Chang, the CEO of A-sha Foods USA, grew up in Wisconsin as the son of Taiwanese immigrants. Chang and Henry Liao, chairman of Taiwan’s shopping mall operator Breeze Group, originally got to know each other because their wives are sisters. Subsequently, they became business partners as well.

Promoting Healthy Noodles, A-sha Foods Ships 40 Containers to Costco per Month

Instant noodles from Asia are ubiquitous in the United States. Nong Shim ramen from South Korea, Nissin cup noodles from Japan, and Indomie instant noodles from Indonesia all found their way onto American supermarket shelves early on.

Therefore, Chang was forced to find a different approach to break into the market. Given that dry noodles need to be cooked first, they are noticeably less convenient than instant noodles. However, they can be marketed as healthier because they contain less fat. From 2011, Chang advertised his noodles with the slogan “air-dried, never fried”. He toured supermarkets, personally demonstrating how the noodles are to be prepared, gradually winning over Californian hand-shaken beverage chains and Asian supermarkets.

For the American consumers, Chang’s noodles represented a novel concept. They came without soup and were not fried, which set them apart from what people traditionally associated with instant noodles.

But A-sha noodles truly became known outside the Asian-American community only in 2013 after Chang sent a few packs to Hans Lienesch, who has gained Youtube fame as The Ramen Rater. Lienesch was surprised at the quality of Taiwanese noodles and immediately published a Taiwanese instant noodle ranking.

Thanks to the Youtuber's endorsement, A-sha noodles were listed by Albertson’s, the second largest supermarket chain in the United States.

However, the lucky period did not last long as sales failed to meet expectations, and A-sha noodles were taken off the shelves. “We didn’t understand food products, we thought orders would come in automatically after listing,” recalls Chang. Having worked at Disney and IBM, Chang likes to joke that he is a food industry outsider who knows how to get into distribution channels but tends to neglect subsequent marketing.

However, they struck it lucky again in 2018 when Costco dispatched 20 buyers to Asia to find specialty products. The American buyers were pleased with A-sha noodles, and immediately placed a US$2 million order which is roughly the equivalent of a monthly shipment of 40 containers.

Having learned his lesson from the earlier setback, Chang this time diligently toured Costco outlets to demonstrate how to prepare the noodles and let customers try the dishes. He established the brand in mainstream culture by signing up NBA star player Duncan Robinson as the brand’s spokesman and launching a new product line together with American celebrity chef David Chang under the name of the latter’s restaurant group, Momofuku.

Young Chang, the CEO of A-sha Foods USA (Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

Earlier this year, grocery store chain Trader Joe’s launched its Squiggly Knife Cut Style Noodles which are produced by A-sha Foods.

Meanwhile, other Taiwanese dry noodles – Tseng Noodles, Laoma Noodles, KiKi Noodles - have followed trailblazer A-sha noodles into American supermarkets. Taiwanese wheat food exports to the United States have more than doubled over the past decade, reaching US$33 million in 2022. “Our focus is on overseas markets. Aside from Japan, the United States offers the greatest growth potential,” notes Chen Rong-chang, founder of the Howsler Laoma Noodle brand.

Online Communities Rave about Bubble Milk Tea Ice Cream

Last year, Taiwan exported baked goods worth more than US$75 million to the United States, representing the largest chunk of agricultural exports to the U.S.

Riding on the craze for bubble milk tea, confectionery featuring that flavor such as popsicles, mochi (sticky rice balls), cakes, and cookies are selling well.

H Mart selected the top 6 of Taiwanese pastries as their 40th anniversary celebration package. (Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

Attractive packaging and appealing ingredients are another reason why sales of Taiwanese food products are booming. Bubble milk tea, for instance, has become a hot topic on social media because it comes with a broad variety of colorful condiments. Younger people in the United States posting photographs of their bubble milk tea concoctions helped the beverage become established in mainstream culture.

Snack Foods Pave the Way for Class A Farm Products

THL’s Chen believes the main battleground for Taiwanese food exports is non-perishable snack foods. Haribo Goldbears and Oreo cookies can be sold worldwide. Taiwanese products that THL provides to distributors in the United States such as I-Mei mini puffs and Lian Hwa potato fries are selling well, but the market penetration of Taiwanese snacks is still low compared to Pocky biscuit sticks and Hi-Chew chewy candy from Japan.

Chen thinks that Taiwanese manufacturers are still too focused on the production side while lacking brand management skills, particularly when it comes to international markets.

Processed food can pave the way for exports of their farm product ingredients.

Bubble milk tea is a case in point. Johnny Tu, CEO of Hwa Gung Tea Co. Ltd., noticed that following the success of bubble milk tea, Americans who do not have roots in Asia, have become more open to tea culture. He points out that if Taiwanese tea growers took advantage of this new interest to reach mainstream consumers, unlimited sales opportunities could be tapped in the future.

Exports of Taiwanese tea leaves to the United States more than doubled over the past ten years, reaching US$26 million in 2022.

But when it comes to exporting fresh fruit and seafood to the United States, producers still have a long way to go.

Fresh mangos from Taiwan, for instance, cannot yet be exported to the United States due to quarantine conditions. Exports of processed mango such as dried fruit, canned fruit, and juice increased from US$100,000 to US$2.4 million last year.

Alan Yang, vice-general manager at Yuanlin-based dried fruit manufacturer Tai Chuan Food, witnessed first-hand how wrong forays into a foreign market can go. The family of his wife is running a fruit preserve factory and began to sell its product in New York in 2014. But they soon gave up after discovering that their prices were not competitive compared to similar products from China and Southeast Asia.

Turning the Tide with Dried Mango

Yang realized that he needed products with unique characteristics if he wanted to make inroads into a foreign market.

In 2018, Tai Chuan began to tackle the American market from the West Coast, advertising its dried fruit products as a healthier choice, stressing that they are free of food dye and sweeteners. They also chose fruit that is not commercially grown in the United States such as Irwin mango and red flesh guava. Thanks to these attributes, the products gained a good reputation in Asian supermarkets and on e-commerce sites.

Chen expects the U.S. market to become hotly contested territory in the coming three years as foreign food brands battle for market share. He predicts that only the strongest brands will survive.

Against this backdrop, it is high time that Taiwanese manufacturers go into the battle with products that are most competitive in terms of flavor and cost.

He suggests setting up production lines in the United States once sales have reached a certain scale to save on shipping costs. This would also make it possible to produce meat products such as frozen dumplings and meat buns for the local market, given that meat imports to the United States are tightly restricted.

Bringing the taste and flavors of Taiwan to the American dinner table is not a mission impossible at all.

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Have you read?

• Chatime Takes Taiwanese Bubble Tea to Epic Success Overseas 
• How Taiwanese bubble tea brand continues global expansion during the pandemic 
• How Taiwanese Bubble Tea Conquered the Taste Buds of The Japanese

Translated by Susanne Ganz
Uploaded by Ian Huang