Founder Feature: Single Origin Soy Sauce and Award Winning Branding with Christine Liu and Clarissa Wei of HEYDOH

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1:17a lot of the chefs and vendors here in Taiwan are using really high quality pantry staples they're using soy sauces made with special soybeans like the blast soybeans that we use And then I realized if I was feeling this way, then most of America does not have access to these high quality staples. And I thought, what would happen if Americans do have access to single origin soy sauce? And Haydo was sort of born from this idea. And ever since we started the company, I cannot go back. I'm like constantly only using Haydo, not because it's my brand, but because when I cook with commodity soy sauce, I can really taste the difference now.

1:59Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Bricker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today, I'm talking with Christine Liu and Clarissa Wei, co-founders of Haydo, a single-origin soy sauce brand that's filling a massive gap in America's grocery stores. Clarissa is a food journalist who spent 15 years covering Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine, and Christine's a data scientist from Big Tech who originally said no to this idea until she tasted the product in Taiwan. We're diving into why the$40 to$59 billion, with a B, global soy sauce market has zero single origin options in major U.S.

2:35retailers, how they run a 24-hour company across time zones with Clarissa in Taiwan and Christine in Brooklyn, and the packaging disaster that ultimately led to a boss move, a pivot that turns them into an award-winning brand. Plus, they're breaking down their shipping nightmare with glass bottles, how they cut costs by forcing their 3PL to shop against their own rates, and why chemistry with your partners matters more than a resume. As always, enjoy.

3:04Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Christine Liu and Clarissa Way, co-founders of Haydo. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Caitlin. I'm so excited to have you here. Christine and I met before Haydo went into the public eye. you're very covert just dropping little hints on Instagram and maybe not even dropping hints at that point anybody who knows me knows I'm like tending to overheat in postpartum which two and a half years at this point but I always need to find the coolest spot and thankfully Christine and I met basically in a freezer in New York about a year ago yes that is what happened it was a lot of people and we both needed AC and you guys were so kind to give me refuge, the staff at Startup CPG.

3:54Well, you know what? It ended up being a really happy thing because I have been able to watch your brand grow from the sidelines, basically. So to have you here for this conversation is very special to me. So I'm excited to get into all things Hado. Before we do that, Clarissa, can you just tell us what Hado is? Yeah. So Hado stands for black soybean and we are a single origin soy sauce brand. Beautiful. Straight to the point. Can you tell us why this is needed in the CPG space? I'm curious because I'm sure people think about hot sauce. They think about pasta sauce and it looks like a very saturated market until you pick up a product and you're like, okay, maybe it's not so saturated anymore.

4:35So why Hado and why now? Yeah, it's really interesting. The global soy sauce market is anywhere from 40 to 59 billion dollars that's two to three times greater than olive oil yet on america's grocery store shelves there is really only what i see or what christina and i see as two different types of soy sauce there's your cheap commodity brands that are five dollars and then there's your like forty dollar heritage brand that is still in japanese or a Chinese script. So we started Heido to really embody that middle ground. There are currently no single origin soy sauces in America's largest grocery stores.

5:15So we saw this opportunity and here we are. It's been quite a ride. I think it's really interesting to hear that. And I think if we add some color with your backgrounds too, I think everything is going to start making sense. So Christine, you want to go first? You want to tell us a bit about your background? Yeah. So I come from the world of tech and big tech, working as a data scientist and data engineer. So at Hado, Clarissa and I like to say, I do everything that's associated with numbers. Love numbers, love spreadsheets. And I'm also the one who's based in Brooklyn, New York, so giving us that presence.

5:49You've seen this at demo events, at different industry events. Yeah, so Clarissa had approached me about this idea and she can go more into like the genesis for her and what actually happened was I originally said no I was just like I don't want to start a company this is crazy like why would I leave because she baked tech life for this and when I was visiting her in Taiwan she let me try some soy sauces we did a factory visit to a potential supplier and I was hooked I was like I get it now so it was basically like a yes at first sip be like, why can't we have better soy sauce in America? This is amazing.

6:29I've never tasted anything like this in all the soy sauce I've had in the States. I love it. Clarissa, tell us about your background. Yeah, so I've been a food journalist for 15 years now, really specializing in Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine. And I've been based in East Asia for eight years. And my whole adult career, I've just been telling the story of Asian food for the American audience. And Haydo was sort of born when I was writing my cookbooks. When you're writing a cookbook for the American audience, you have to sort of test with whatever pantry you can get at most American grocery stores.

7:06So I was using cheap soy sauce, your average brand that you can get, Kiko Men or Lee Kum Ki. We can buy that here in Taiwan as well, where I'm based. And I was starting to realize that when I use these sauces, the dishes weren't hitting right. The dishes did not taste like what they taste like in Taiwan. And it wasn't because of the recipe, because I was getting these recipes from the vendors itself. It was because a lot of the chefs and vendors here in Taiwan are using really high quality pantry staples. They're using soy sauces made with special soybeans, like the blast soybeans that we use.

7:42And then I realized if I was feeling this way, then most of America does not have access to these high quality staples. And I thought, what would happen if Americans do have access to single origin soy sauce? And Hado was sort of born from this idea. And ever since we started the company, I cannot go back. I'm like constantly only using Hado, not because it's my brand, but because when I cook with commodity soy sauce, I can really taste the difference now. And I don't have a palette for soy sauce, but when I tried Haydo, I knew this was different. Not only for the flavor, but for the branding too.

8:20It's just so different from anything else you see on shelf. Why wouldn't I gravitate towards it? Catches my eye and then the palette, it's cleansed basically from any other soy sauce that I would ever want to use again. So how did you land on choosing soy sauce specifically? I know you have the silky. I know you have, is it the classic? And then I saw that you're also expanding your lineup. How did you choose to keep it just so tight in such a crowded market? It comes down to storytelling. I think when you overwhelm people with too many skews, people get really confused with how to use it. And we chose soy sauce because, again, I would say probably the most foundational Asian condiment there is.

9:05And most people in America know soy sauce, even if you don't cook. And that's how we came up with the classic and silky. So classic is for people who have a familiarity with Asian food who already use soy sauce on a regular basis. Silky is the one for people who, when they think of soy sauce, they think it as a dip for dumplings or they use it with sushi. And they don't really cook with it, but they'll dip with it. So there's two different use cases for two completely different consumers. But these two types of consumers really embody what we think is the average American. And yeah, we just didn't want to overcomplicate things because if we did, it would sort of this product would relegate itself to specialty ethnic niche stores.

9:47And that's not our goal with Heido. Our goal with Heido is to bring it as big as it can possibly be. You know, it's pretty refreshing to hear that. That's a word I say often on the show. And I talk to a lot of founders who obviously have Whole Foods as that store that they're looking at that they really want to get into. And then I talk to other brands who are saying, you know what? Slow and steady. I want to keep my brand small. I want to grow very steadily. I don't want to be big. And you are changing the narrative here. You want to be everywhere. You want people to recognize Hey Do. And I think that is very cool to have big goals like that.

10:22Well, that was the only way I could convince Christine. To quit. The truth comes out. Our big tech job. I mean, it's a huge market opportunity, right? And it's fascinating how no one has done it yet. And I'm glad we are sort of occupying that space. Yeah. The way I think about it, too, is kind of what Clarissa was saying. It's like everyone should be able to have access to this, right? They shouldn't have to order from our website or they shouldn't have to travel to the one Asian grocery store in a 100-mile radius, which is like a reality for lots of Americans, they should be able to go to their Whole Foods.

10:57They should be able to go to their Western supermarket and be able to find high quality soy sauce. Right. And our soy sauce is also lower sodium, too. So like there's a really special health aspect to that, too. I don't know if I knew that. That is really cool. I know I see a lot of brands that are calling out on their label and that's their differentiator. They have like their original SKU and then they have their low sodium SKU. But you're just coming out very specifically having the low sodium skew, which immediately makes you a clear winner, again, with the branding and the flavor. So I think that's great.

11:30Yeah, that was part of the market research too. Like 52 % of Americans say they prefer lower sodium. So when we were sort of crafting or deciding what skews to put out, this was immediately a huge draw for us. So not only lower sodium, but single origin and no artificial additives. I mean, I'm a mom myself, something I would feel good about serving my young kids. I love it. Yeah. Before we launched, we did a survey among friends and family, and we've really insisted on people pass it to like second, third degree connections. So it's not just us on the echo chamber. Low sodium, I think it was almost everybody was checking that off as something that they really cared about.

12:09So just really reflective of the more national data that course is setting. Can you give us some insight into other questions that you were asking to survey your group before you went and launched? Yeah, so initially we gave them the Silky and we thought that was going to just be our all-purpose hero product. And then we realized that people thought it was a bit sweet, that it was more for finishing. Because when we built this, I initially just wanted one SKU. And then this differentiation between classic and Slicky was really built based on consumer feedback and our survey feedback. So when people are like, oh, it's a bit sweet, I think it's more of a finishing sauce, really, okay, then we'll just make it the finishing sauce.

12:51And then we set out to find our classic soy sauce, the one with no sugar. The other really fun thing that we were surveying on, so I was passing out and mailing bottles of our soy sauce, is also the first pass set design, which Clarissa talks a lot about on her sub stack and also on Instagram. So we had hired a designer in Taiwan who was great. She just didn't quite have the experience working for a Western market, understanding kind of like the needs of the Western consumer and had a difficult time translating what we wanted onto paper. So we ended up our first passive design. I'm not sure if you can attach pictures in the show notes or something.

13:30Basically looks like the Robin Hood like stock trading app on a bottle. and it just like doesn't work when you're like i want to eat like healthy soy sauce we were saying like we want something full we want something edgy and we ended up with the robin hood app so that was also something we were surveying is like hey what do you think about this and people were like yeah it's kind of weird so that was really helpful feedback and it really kind of pushed us to be like hey we want this to stick out like part of this narrative is like we want this to be culturally acceptable too, right? Or accessible.

14:03Like people should want to grab this off the shelf. They should understand what they're looking at when they see this bottle. So it really pushed us to working with a branding studio. And we were hesitant, of course, of spending the money because it's not cheap. These branding studios do amazing work. But we really dug in and thought about like what we needed. And we realized we needed some help telling the story we wanted to tell. And it obviously worked because you just won a Dyneline award, did you not? Three Dyneline awards, actually. So yeah, at the Dyneline party at night, they give out like these trophies, right, that have the D on us.

14:39I was walking around with three Ds, like look at my triple Ds and laughing to myself. I would be laughing with you. Thank you. Thank you. So what was really awesome is like we got to work with an awesome team and we got best in food, which was... Wow. I was shocked. And especially looking at all the other people who had entered, all the other recipients, like there's some really amazing packaging out there. And I'm so honored that we got to be recognized with our branding studio. Did you get a heads up before the awards ceremony that you're winning or did you find out on the spot? Absolutely. We got a heads up.

15:13OK. I don't think I would have showed up at that show. The show that hosted the actual awards ceremony was a packaging show. Wow. On a Wednesday afternoon in New York City. Dye Line to me as a consumer feels like it would be a North Star of recognition for a CPG brand, even if you just get a mention on Instagram. Did you feel like, oh my God, this is it. This is my moment. Definitely. And because we got best of food, which is a full category, we got to give a little speech too. So I felt like I was winning an Oscar, which is not going to happen probably in this lifetime. So that was really cool.

15:50And I think what was really awesome, too, is when we were thinking about our branding before we actually settled on what is the HeyDo branding, we were looking at Dialy. We were looking at Dialy for inspiration, looking at past winners, looking at people in the directory being like, oh, wow, this branding studio looks good or this packaging looks really good. And one of the big questions for us was part of that culturally acceptable part. Like we want to look, quote unquote, authentic, but also accessible to the everyday American. So finding that balance. So having Dylane as a resource and other design websites, too, was really, really critical for kind of understanding what we needed.

16:33Can we shout out your agency that you ended up working with? Yes, they are amazing. They are called Here4 and they're based on the West Coast and Hawaii. And yeah, everyone go and talk to them. They're also some of the sweetest people out there. Wow. I am super impressed with your branding. When we first met, you gave me the sticker with the bean that's like this, which I still have in a box of stickers that I have that I just am like, what am I going to do with these? I don't want to stick it on a random place and then have it just be gone forever. But I think it's really cool to hear that that came full circle for you.

17:08First, the Robin Hood branding, rest in peace. And now we have an award-winning brand times three, right? Or times four. Three triple Ds, triple Ds. Triple Ds, right. Hello. How could I forget? We've touched on this very briefly already, but you are working in different countries. Clarissa, you're in Taiwan. Christine, you're in Brooklyn. What is that like? How are you connecting with each other on a daily basis? And what tasks are you taking on individually to make this brand be whole? Clarissa, you want to start? Yeah, we joke that we're a 24-hour company, which is true. And what is lovely is that I am a morning person and Christine is a night owl.

17:51So our times actually overlap more than one would think. And Christine has come to Taiwan a couple of times. And when she's actually here, it's hard to schedule because she's a night owl and I'm a morning person. So in a way, this works out. But what sucks is that I'm not physically in the States. I'm in charge of marketing. And so much of marketing these days is like brand activations and community building. And Christine's been a trooper really just doing operations and logistics, but also doing community building on the ground. But I just think we live in such a digital age with all of these technology tools.

18:30It really is possible to run a company from across the world, though being there in the States and having an on the ground presence and going to start up CPG buyer meetings, which have been huge for us, is very valuable as well. Christine, can you speak to your experience with the Startup CPG meetings? Yeah, no, Startup CPG has absolutely been a lifeline for a small brand like us. Like we had a small friends and family around, but we're mostly bootstrapping. So we, through these meetings, we were able to get in a happier grocer, which is an awesome win. And also with the Sierra Expo, we were able to get into Good Stuff Distributor, which works in the Bay Area and a potential regional grocer that I will keep a mum about for now.

19:16And also a few other potential clients down the line. So Startup CPG has been great. And what's awesome, I think, too, is like it's just so accessible. Tickets are cheap. People are friendly. And people love sharing knowledge, too. People also like asking for things. The number of times I've been asked by someone I just met for what my margins are is kind of a lot. But I think it's also part of it, too. What I've also found in the CPG community is that people are so nice and people are so willing to share. And it's been really amazing, especially coming from an industry like tech, which is a bit more competitive and a bit more cut through, is that a lot of this is, at the end of the day, luck.

19:58Right. And I think because of that, people are more willing to give you more of their maybe secret sauce or talk more about their experience to kind of help each other avoid pitfalls. Like the number of calls that Clarissa and I have had with other founders where they've just given us a buyer email or they told us like, oh, avoid this person or this like entity because this and this from my experience. It's been amazing. And like we also try to do the same for others. That's what community is, right? Being able to give and take. And if you don't have the give and take, you don't have community.

20:32It's a little village. It is, to be cliche. It is. I think the piece about being honest about experiences is key because you don't want to steer people in the wrong direction. I'm sure both of you know, again, I'm not a CPG founder, but I see all the time on social media that people go with the wrong agency. They go with the wrong branding agency, the wrong Amazon agency, whatever it is. And they end up putting all of this money in to make a massive mistake for their brand that either sets them back tremendously or just kills the brand altogether. So that honesty aspect is so important. And I have to say to Clarissa, you were mentioning about the marketing.

21:14I had such a good laugh watching the Myrtle Wombat video when you were saying, hey, go check out the product on the shelf. And you're like, Christine goes in and didn't film the product. I forgot. I'm basically training her to be an influencer from abroad and she's doing great. Like Christina is way better in front of the camera than I am. I'm just good at like finding the talking points, but Christina is a natural. It's actually a really weird combination we have. She's the extrovert. I'm the introvert, but I'm in charge of marketing and she's in charge of the numbers. But somehow we manage. We're flipping the narrative.

21:53You're doing amazing, sweetie. everywhere. It's so good. Yeah. I bought my first like tripod selfie stick and I was like walking around with it. I'm like, oh, this is my slow descent into content creation. And I don't know if I love it, but like Clarissa mentioned earlier, like it's one of those things that in this day and age for marketing, you kind of have to do, right? It's just very different than it was 10 years ago. And people love seeing a big head talking reel for better or for worse. it's true it's so true and authenticity too like all those videos with christine that is her real self she really did forget to the sauce so i just tried to make a moment out of it i'm the one who edits it so that it's like funny but like i'm combing through so much like 10 minutes of footage and i'm like where's the soy sauce i got distracted by the slushy machine I mean, it's valid.

22:49Yeah, you sent me like a two minute of a slushy machine. Like, what is this? Speed it up, 2x. I have to ask too, because everything seems so smooth when you look at everything on Instagram for most brands. And when you launched, it felt like you just took off running. Products were selling out. You were getting into retailers. is there anything that you ran into while building the brand that you'd consider a snag that you'd say hey I wish we did this a little differently on my side I mean Christine alluded to this already but really was the design I guess that was before the branch launching the brand yeah so the design thing we could do like a more kind of tight bit about the design if you want Caitlin but the other thing is the 3PL situation so we launched with this 3PL that is famous for taking on smaller brands and like everything seemed great at first but oh my god behind the scenes bottles were breaking everywhere left and right bottles from like this 3PL I don't want to name where it is but basically like going just three miles bottles were breaking we're like oh no no this is not gonna work so I had to physically go to the 3PL pretty much weekly wow and try to troubleshoot what was happening.

24:06So when we first launched, we had this beautiful idea that we wanted to be as eco-friendly as possible. And I think we're doing the best we can. There's that liquid in glass bottles is probably the heaviest thing to ship possible, right, for a consumer if you're not buying like specialized machinery. So what we want to do at first is to use like all paper materials. Instead of bubble wrap, we wanted to use this honeycomb paper, which is basically like the paper form of bubble wrap we're like it's so cute people will be so like delighted it turns out you can't really protect glass with a few sheets of crinkled paper which we found out one day in from the first bottles being shipped out from the 3PL so I had to go in be like oh my god what is happening and within the first three or four weeks we had to do like an emergency turnaround where we use like wine shippers that we got from i think uline because they did like next day delivery we had to use wine shippers just to get things to stop breaking because otherwise like all of our product was just like shattering everywhere so eventually though we ended up being introduced to this wine shipping brand that sells these inserts that they're actually based in queen so local to basically save our entire like 3pl shipping situation.

25:28So now our breakage went from like, I don't know, it's like 25%. We hardly hear a peep about it now, actually, which is amazing. Wow. I imagine it's a very expensive mistake to make, choosing what you think is going to be the right 3PL and turns out that it's not. Do you have a name of the company that you're using now for the packing? Yeah. For the packaging, the guy's great. It's called Spirited Shippers. So they make this proprietary bottle shipper. That's awesome. So shout out to Bruce there too. Hi Bruce. Yeah, it really saved our brand. Another snag, we can keep this or leave this, is also about shipping costs because not only is shipping liquid and glass very risky, it's also really expensive, it turns out.

26:11So another thing that happened with the first 3PL we were with when we launched was our shipping costs were, it was just like out of this world and saying, we were like, what is this? I was spending hours combing through our charges every month when we got the bill. I was like, okay, we can't do this. So basically, I had to go in and do essentially an audit of what are ways to get our shipping costs down. And what's been really fun is the new 3PL we've been working with has been really open to working with us to keep shipping costs down at the expense of arguably their own profit. so what we do now essentially is we bring our own shipping rates and have the newest 3pl shop against our shipping rates and whoever wins we are at least guaranteed that we're getting the lowest shipping cost possible and that's actually really helped us remain in the green when it comes to d2c because otherwise again shipping glass bottles is extremely expensive they're extremely heavy but kind of forcing like a rate picker sorry this is getting like kind of boring but i love the shit.

27:14Please, you're speaking the language for CPG founders. Yeah, I mean, I would have loved to hear this. Yeah. So like forcing our 3PL to pick against our rates has honestly been a godsend because we're able to get shipping labels down like three, four dollars on the package. Wow. That adds up. They sound like an excellent partner. Yeah. I'm happy to shout them out. So do it. Yeah. So we are working with Handled Commerce. They have a warehouse in New Jersey and one in Southern California, and they've been an amazing partner. And if you mention us, I think we both get a little perk. There you go. And we found them through Startup CPG as well.