Yoshida’s has been a household name for generations.
It was the glorious, thick sauce jug that sat on pantry shelves waiting to coat chicken thighs for a family barbecue. It was a go-to marinade for an easy, delicious meal, bound to please a crowd.
Then, it disappeared. Customers were left wondering when they’d taste the sticky goodness again.
The time has come for all Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet Sweet Teriyaki Marinade & Cooking Sauce fans to celebrate, as Junki Yoshida, founder and CEO, has reacquired his brand, Yoshida Foods International, and is stocking the shelves once again with his iconic sauce.
“They destroyed the Yoshida brand name completely into the ground,” Yoshida said of his Portland-based company.
It was 24 years ago when the CEO of Heinz Co. came to Yoshida’s office in hopes of purchasing his sauce. At the time, Yoshida said his sauce controlled 26% of the teriyaki category in the nation.
“It was a mystery in the food industry,” Yoshida said of the success.
The Japanese-American entrepreneur would’ve never expected a sauce that was first made in 1982 in his basement would be such a boom.
With a Japanese name and a Japanese flavor, of course Yoshida wanted his product sitting front and center along the infamous Heinz products — it was his dream — rather that being shuffled alongside the other sauces in the Asian food aisle.
His product was flying off the shelves in membership clubs across the country.
Awaiting Yoshida was an offer to sell his company.
“My answer is no,” he told Joe Jimenez, CEO of H.J. Heinz Co. North America, at the time.
The next proposition: selling the U.S. distribution rights.
Yoshida agreed.
He boasted three salespeople, including himself, which was incomparable to Jimenez’s staff of at least 130 salespeople, and with Yoshida’s business bringing in $26 million per year, he felt Jimenez’s team couple double or triple that easily.
But Yoshida had it all wrong.
The plan was for Yoshida to produce his coveted sauce, and provide international oversight, and Heinz would sell it. As profits came in, money wasn’t being spent to continue generating profit.
“Business is like a blood circulation,” Yoshida said. “Money is circulating among the business, people don’t spend it, increasing profits, well, what happens after that? Sales drop.”
Yoshida planned to retire about two years ago when his grandson decided he wanted to join the company 10 years from then — he is currently enrolled in university.
Again, his plans changed. He was ready to sell everything when he said, “I have to save the Yoshida brand. They are destroying our name.”
As many loyal customers know, the brand has been dead for years. Some found the sweet sauce through secondary resellers, or maybe had a stock pile in their pantry, but the product seemingly poofed into thin air.
It wasn’t until April, when Yoshida spent two months working to take the brand name and licensing back. In June, he was able to start working his way back into the market.
Just 17 days ago, his sauce went live on Amazon and climbed its way to the best selling barbecue sauce for two weeks in a row.
The sauce is still made traditionally, cooking it themselves rather than sending it through a commercial heating pipe, but they are managing to produce about 4,000 cases per day.
Though the Heinz Co. paid him “big money” for his brand back in April 2000, the fall of his sauce brand was beyond a disappointment.
“I call it positive revenge,” Yoshida said. “Watch me Heinz, watch what I can do.”
The sauce can currently be found on Amazon and in select Costco stores on the West Coast. Due to high demand, they must hold off on stores beyond that. Yoshida recently received calls from Safeway and Albertsons hoping to carry his sauce again.
On Thursday, Sept. 5, Yoshida made his first shipment to West Coast locations of Safeway and Albertsons — just more than 1,000 locations.
“I’m 75 years old, and I’m ready to go,” Yoshida said. He’s ready to grow this company again for his family.
Sporting a cowboy hat and a purple Hawaiian shirt, Yoshida said that even at his age, every day is excitement, so long as he can find motivation and pump himself up.
For those longtime lovers of Yoshida’s sauce, or for the newbies who don’t know what they’ve been missing, Yoshida recommends dousing chicken thighs or wings with his sauce, but you might as well just take a bath in it, per Yoshida’s guidelines.
Local News
