Live Episode! Tofurky: Seth Tibbott

Support for how I built this and the following message come from American Express. You want to build your business, they can help build your business with financing solutions for eligible business customers. The powerful backing of American Express, don't do business without it. Terms apply, visit AmericanExpress dot com slash business. Twenty years, twenty years of losing money. What what I mean, how are you paying your employees? How are you You know?

Well, that was the question that my Tax guy always asked me every year when I'm going to be a good thing. He would say I got two questions for you. How much money did you lose this year and how are you still in business?

I'm in PR, it's how I built this. show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. Don't. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today. How Seth Tibbet built a brand new bird out of tofu.

Then grew his company into a multi-million dollar business with one of the best names ever. Toferki. So if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you may already be well aware that meatless meat. is kind of having a moment. Restaurants that built their entire business models on feeding us ground up animal flesh are experimenting with legitimate plant-based burgers.

Even KFC is experimenting with a new product called VFC, which is a bucket of vegan fried chicken coated with the Colonel's secret blend of 12 herbs and spices. Now, before we get too ahead of ourselves, I should mention that humans are consuming more animals than ever before. The percentage of vegetarians and vegans in the US hasn't substantially increased since 2000. But there is a growing segment of the population that is cutting back on meat. Not vegetarians, but Lexians. And can I just say this as a guilty flexitarian myself, eating meat is really bad for our planet, right?

I mean worldwide livestock production produces more carbon emissions than all global transportation. Meanwhile, a lot of innovative entrepreneurs believe there is serious to be made in plant based protein. Just last month, Ethan Brown's company, Beyond Meat, had one of the most successful IPOs of the year. and it's now valued at over five billion dollars.

And another company, Impossible Burger, just raised a bunch of money at a two billion dollar valuation. Anyway, one of the people who envisioned this decades ago, or at least hoped really hard, that all of this would happen? Back in the ear 1980s, Seth was a committed vegetarian living in Oregon. Making and marketing a food that hardly anyone had heard of at the time.

Tempe. And for years, Seth. Barely scraped by. He even lived in a tree house to save money. But everything changed when he started selling a frozen holiday roast called Tofurki, which was a turkey substitute made, as you probably guessed.

From Tofu. The tofurki quickly became a symbol of vegetarian pride and the butt of many, many late night jokes. And all that helped raise its profile. And as more people became vegetarian or vegan, Seth was eventually able to grow Toferki into the roughly$40 million a year company it is today. The company now makes all kinds of plant based protein in Hood River, Oregon.

Not far from Portland. I sat down with Seth in front of a live audience last month in Portland to hear more about how he did it. I was a scrawny little kid and I was a very picky eater. I subsisted on Uh brown sugar and butter sandwiches and little baby peas that my mom would shuck and she'd leave me the baby peas, raw baby peas, which actually is probably one of the better foods you could eat. Raw peas. But

You know, I grew up and I actually kinda hated Thanksgiving, to be honest, because I would go down to my Aunt Glenn and Uncle Ned's farm in rural Virginia, Palmyra, Virginia. And I didn't like turkey, I didn't like mashed potato, I didn't like the green, but I didn't like any of the food. Cranberry, nothing. And my mom would you know be slipping me like

I was a picky eater. And and what like what how would you describe yourself as a kid? Were you studious, were you academic, were you I was maybe a B student, yeah growing up. Um, not really academic. I was more sports minded, followed the local sports teams. And like to play baseball. My

Career goal was second base for the Washington Senators baseball team. Didn't happen, but not yet. I'm still here. Um All right. Nineteen sixty nine. We're jumping ahead of it. Ninete nine You go to college in Ohio, I think

You went to two different colleges, one was Wittenberg Wittenberg and and then Antioch. And and what did you study in college? Well, first just sort of general courses and then I when it came time to declare a major I Liked kids, so I studied elementary education until I started taking these classes and found out they were pretty boring. And uh Yeah, so I dropped out of school.

ended up in Antioch. So th just to put this in context, I mean this is like the height of the Vietnam War, like, you know, post summer of love, early seventies, right? This is Um Just just um and this is a bit of foreshadowing, but like Did you have any sense that you were going to do a business and what did you think about people who had businesses?

What was your mindset about that then? Well I laughed at business majors. Me and my Friends we Did not. You know, Union Carbide, DuPont, those General Motors, General Electric, they were the enemies. It wasn't the hotbed of social change. So We really I never I never took a business class in college and uh never had any aspirations to be a business class. No, no, none at all.

So after I dropped out of school I became a naturalist, actually a teacher naturalist at Glenn Helen Outdoor Center, which was run by Antioch College. And it was there that I really discovered a love of doing things positive in the outdoors with kids. And I was like this is what I want to do. I wanna

teach kids but I wanna be on the other side of the classroom, on the outside. So I learned that trade and then I came west and I got a job right here. in the Portland area in Washington County teaching outdoor school. Around this time, you're in your early twenties You come across this book, Diet for a Small Planet. Right. Um, which like has this huge effect on you. What is the book for people don't know it and what what did you Learn from that book.

Well, this was a book by Frances Moore LePay, and she was the first person to point out to the American public and to me personally. That's The There was no sense of feeding all of these grains.

through animals, you know, you take fifteen pounds of grains and put it in to an animal and you get maybe eight ouncer a pound of meat as opposed to if you feed grain directly to people. Boom. You know, you've saved so much. grain and resources and land and everything, and it made sense to me as a naturalist because I was really concerned about habitat loss, and I thought

Well, if there was the sufficient way of producing protein for people that there would be a lot less habitat loss. And that inspired you to become a vegetarian, like right away? Well that and a meal from a beautiful young woman named Laurel McAlen who cooked a recipe of lentils, rice, and onions. And uh I just she talked about Not needing to eat animals and I thought boy this'll be great. So when you became a vegetarian, what did your diet mainly consist of? Vanilla wafers.

Kind of not mainstream, right? There really wasn't a lot of knowledge about any aspect of vegetarian diet. In in the summer of maybe it was like seventy four, semi-five. You end up

Visiting a hippie commune in In Tennessee. Called the farm. where you first discover this incredible thing called Tempe. What was that what was that? Visit. W w what was going on there? How'd you end up there?

Well they were pure vegetarians. And they took a vow of poverty. They only ate beans and fruits and vegetables. They had soy dairies all over the world, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, and when the hurricanes And tornadoes would go through Tennessee, they'd go out there and they'd build houses for people and they'd do really good. They were a a great force for good in the world and it wasn't just sit around and

Get high. It was a good thing. And although they smoked a lot of marijuana. Vegan food, marijuana. In the seventies, they smoked a lot of marijuana. So is this a

This is the first time you are introduced to this like thing called Tempe. Uh I remember making it in the Hot Tennessee summer, which is a middle

It's like Indonesia. If you haven't been there is like about eighty eight degrees, which is a perfect Tempe incubating temperature. Right. Okay. And Tennessee was the same way. And so I We had the all the staff was sitting around on a weekend and I was making the tempeh.

And I put the beans, the inoculated beans, out into a field just in a stainless steel pan. And the next day I went over there and I pulled up the lid of the tinfoil and there was this beautiful white cake of mold growing all over the beans. And it had little droplets of water on it, and I was just like This looks great. And everybody on the staff was like We're gonna probably die. Seth, I know that we are in Portland and so everyone in this audience can tell me everything about Tempe.

But just for the people who are listening who don't know what it is. Can you just tell me what tempeh is? Yeah, absolutely. So tempeh is an Indonesian protein food from Indonesia. It's soybeans. And the way you make it is you take the hull off, which makes the beans split into two pieces, two cotilitons, you cook the beans. And you dry the beans and inoculate'em with Rhizopus oligosporus, which is a mold member of the mold family. And you incubate it for twenty four hours or so at uh eighty eight degrees and It binds the beans together into this thick cake that's about the texture of like a

So all right, so you're you're thinking, alright, this is actually pretty good. Right. You I guess end up going back to Oregon after the summer in Tennessee And you kept making tempeh, right? Right. So I was started making tempeh for

friends and family and There were retreat groups that would come out, so they wanted some tempeh, and I got an old refrigerator and I strung Christmas tree lights. Up inside the refrigerator. Refrigerator as a heat source. Back then, not the LED lights. These were the big old. Oh, the big huge Christmas lights. And you you plugged it in, closed the fridge. Right. And then you had like a warm refrigerator to incubate that. We were living in a teepee in the summer and a barn in the winter.

And this is the most NPR meets Portland conversation I've ever had in my life. So Uh And how are you uh how are you cooking the tempeh? Just like what was your

You were just cutting it up and Frying it up like bacon or what? cook it and there's a very talented cook and so the the retreat groups loved it. And It was little income f my pocket. Yeah.

Five pounds of tempeh, you know, would bring in Seven dollars. Uh idea come to mind.

Well My girlfriend Kim and I moved into a house in Manning, Oregon, which is on the way to the coast on Highway Twice. Right down the street was this restaurant called the Java Restaurant, and it was right in Manning, which is a town of about fifty people. It's was the only Indonesian restaurant a hundred yards from my house and I was, this is a sign, and so I gotta go down and meet him. So I met this woman

Ina And she was the proprietor of it and I said It doesn't look like you have Tempe on the menu. And she goes, You know how to make tempeh? You know about tempeh? And I said, Yeah, I can make you some and she said Really? And so she ordered two pounds. And I and she said, But it's gotta be good, Tempe.

And if it is I'll order more and I'll sell it to all my friends. So I went there and I made that tempeh, I brought it back, she liked it and she ordered ten more pounds. And because of that, I felt like You know, this is a good sign, so I went to the local co op for Scrove.

And I asked if they would rent me their kitchen. at night and they said yeah, w we can rent it out to you for Twenty five dollars a month, so It was like great. So it December one, nineteen eighty.

I sent in my stamped envelope to the state of Oregon and registered Turtle Island Soy Dairy. As a business. As a business. Wow. And and I mean I have to imagine like Ninety nine point nine percent of the people you came across are like What's Tempe? Like what like Tempe like were you having to explain this

Over and over and over again at people? Oh yeah. And not only we're you know people saying what is tempeh, but People were telling me, you know, this is a pretty bad idea. Weird. and uh enforce grove substitute teaching to make some money and I went into the last day of teaching I Announced to the

lunchroom of teachers that you know I'm gonna start making Tempe. Yeah and it was just like oh my god, silence. Yeah. What and then I was like, Yeah, it's moldy soybeans and they were like

That tastes like a paperback blinding. I didn't mention that. Okay. Should have, but they uh And then finally one of the teachers said Well You can always fall back on teaching. You always want to have a fallback. I always say that to entrepreneurs. Right. You always wanna you know if plan A doesn't work, you got plan B. Right. Tempe and teaching. All right. And you were doing this all by yourself, pretty much. Okay.

I was doing it by myself and I was driving In my three door Beat up. Some body damage dots and station wagon. And

And it was really the co ops that kind of embraced it most at first. And who was buying Tempe in nineteen eighty one? Was it just like really kind of hippies. I mean I and just for the record, you know this,'cause we talk backstage. I love tempeh. I make my own tempeh bacon. All right, I'm just gonna be clear about this. Full disclosure. Who was buying Tempe in 1981?

It was the early adopters. Right call in marketing terms. Alright, so you're you're starting to get You know, it's really starting to ramp up production. Uh we should put this in context'cause you're Not really making any money. But you had to find a bigger space, I guess, in nineteen eighty one and you moved to to Houst to Houston. Well, yeah, so in Washington April of nineteen eighty one, a distributor called Applegate Natural Foods

out here in Tiger called up and said We need you to make us a thousand pounds of tempeh a week. Wow. And I was making like a hundred pounds a night on a good night. And a lot of it was coming out bad and I was composting it in my garden, much to the delight of the local rufa sighted Toby population. So you had to find a way to do that. So I needed a bigger space now. We were grossing like

thirteen hundred dollars a month at that point. And so I started looking outside the Portland metropolitan area and I went up to Cusom, which is about seventy miles from Here, east of your small little town. And I looked in the window of a school building. There was an old vacant school building out there.

And I looked in the window and there was this perfect tempeh kitchen. It was like the It was not a tempeh kitchen, it was just before it was in my mind kitchen. A commercial kitchen, right? It was a commercial kitchen. But you're you're looking at that you're saying Tampe Kitchen. Yeah. And it had Two Big huge stainless steel sinks. It had stainless steel tables. Wow. Hood. And it even had two store rooms that were just the right size for a Tempe Incubator.

It was just sitting there and it was a for sale sign on it. And so I called up the superintendent. And he was saying, yes, we really want to sell this, but as we spoke he was thinking We haven't had anybody offering on it, so maybe we would rent it to you, so I said, could you put me on the DACA for the school board meeting? And so he was nice enough to do that, and so

My brother Bob came out and we cooked up some tempeh Wow for the local school board. And what do they think? Well Yeah.

This is nineteen eighty one. Yeah. And people even the early adop they weren't the early adopters when we say that. They were um sceptical, but they were open to the presentation and I made tempeh salad and I cooked up some tempeh sort of strips and I

Fed it to them and then the conversation turned to Well How much could you afford for rent if we did rent this to you, which was the conversation I was dreading. Because I didn't have much money. So

I said, how about one hundred and fifty dollars a month? It was just like Silence. Yeah, and nobody said anything for a minute. And then This one woman who was

Kind of like really enjoying the Tempe. She goes. I say we take it. What do we have to lose? Wow.

So you get Amazing. So you get this commercial space An abandoned school for one hundred fifty bucks a month. You gotta make a thousand pounds of tempeh a week, by the way.

What did you know about running a business? At that. Point. Oh, I knew nothing. Yeah.

Were you like business. I was a tempe maker. I felt like I never felt like I you know uh A a businessman. My third eye never opened up and businessman. Did you even do any accounting or did you keep any books or anything like that? No, no, nothing like that. No double ledger. No. You know, I've always felt like a little misfit. In the business world, so still do in a lot of ways. So just to be clear, I mean you were making Tempe, it's like nineteen eighty three. Yeah.

You are not making money. You are not profitable, right? No. Um you're living kind of um pretty modestly, I think at a at a certain point that year You couldn't afford your rent. What did you do? Well There was a couple of strategies, but one was uh the postmaster of the town had given me a uh apartment to rent.

free. She said, We just need somebody to live there. Yeah. And so I was living rent free And I was thinking, How am I gonna make money and turn this thing around? And I said, I've got three classrooms that I can rent out. And so One classroom I rented out to my friends who had a graphic art business. And they were good payers.

I had The other classroom I rent out to a mom and pop wooden fruit basket company that were making fruit boxes. Okay. And then I had this one more classroom and I'm like, what am I gonna do with this other classroom? I couldn't find a rent, you know, this is poor part of Clicatac County. And one day I'm sitting there in my office and I look outside and here comes this purple truck. And it's got a yellow umbrella on the top. And it pulls up.

These two guys get out. And they come in and they go. My name is Ace and this is space, and we're clowns. And I'm like,

And they said. And we

Okay. and we need a space For our our clown business to build props. Huh. And I was like, I think I can provide you that space. Yeah.

And they were people were like You're gonna rent to these clowns? I'm like You had me at Ace and Space. So

But you're living rent free. But eventually you got what, you got kicked out of your apartment or the rent market Got a little better and so now there were people that would really pay for that apartment. So you got kicked out. So I don't have a place to live and uh one of my employees, Amber Ezek, had a piece of land right outside Howsome and she offered to

Rent me four trees for twenty five dollars a month. Four trees for twenty five dollars a month. And then I could build a tree house. You could build a tree house for twenty five dollars a month. Which you did. You lived in a tree house for seven years. I did. Did it have like running water, electricity, phone, anything. Well what

What did you have in there? Well, it had a wood stove so it was insulated and you know, it was very warm and cozy in the winter. Um it had three levels. It had a eleven foot by sixteen foot ground floor and then a sleeping loft above that and a little cupola yeah up on the top and uh it was kinda the first tiny house. And the tree house was on a Frisbee golf course. Mm-hmm. So I'm living on a golf course. American Dream. Pretty amazing, right? You are going to the school every day making tempeh. But no, I mean seriously, like you're, you know, you know, you're sort of approaching your late 30s and you're really you're not making any money and you're You live in a tree house, which is cool, but it's you know, I was just wondering, were you stressed out? Like, or is any part of you like, I gotta.

figure another figure something else out. I I need a new strategy because I don't know if this is gonna Bi a sustainable life. Yeah.

The thought came up. And actually in nineteen eighty six I had an offer to sell the tempeh business to a local tofu company. and they offered me twenty five thousand dollars for the business.

Which would have been life changing money for them. And then I could go work for them for a thousand dollars a month. And I thought about it long and hard. It took me about nine months to decide you know, whether I'm gonna take this or not. And uh went through a lot of those questions at that time and The end of the line I just said.

I like I'm I'm growing and I'm gonna stick with this, so I I I kept the the business. I turned down the big money. Yeah. When we come back in just a moment. Has Seth Tibbet eventually starts to make big money.

With a humble holiday roast? Made of tofu. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1991 and Seth Tibbet has been making Tempe for about 10 years, and at this point, it is very safe to say,

The business is not making him a rich man. I I read that and and this is amazing. There was like a period of eight years and probably the these are the tree house years. Yeah. Where You're Entire take home pay over a period of eight years. Was

Thirty thousand dollars. Nobody could live on thirty thousand. Thirty one thousand dollars over an eight year period. I mean, nine years, technically.

Did you I mean. Were you were you ever like kinda I don't know, did you ever have anxiety over w would you ever think, I don't know what I'm doing with my life or I had some existential nausea. Yeah. Like the mission sense, you know, seeing this

Tempe business grow and seeing people Eating more and more of the product. It was satisfying and I was involved in local activism in the eco world I had a very fulfilling life. I I never I mean

There was A period towards the end of that where I was really starting to wonder whether it was ever gonna take off. And I was looking for Ways out. I guess around around nineteen eighty nine you

Who would become your wife, Sue. Did she move into the tree house with you or I don't know. Like how did that work? You know, it's funny because right now people ask Sue, they go. Did he make you sign up prenup? And she goes, Prenup?

I was just the one that needed the prenup, he lived in a tree. I had a house. So she saved you, you got to move in with her. So yeah, she had a house on the ground.

Yeah. Save. Yeah. And so uh yeah. Um, eventually I guess I guess around ninety two you made your way to Hood River here in Oregon. Where your plant is still today.

Um Why did you move from Washington State. Well towards the end of the Houston run the School district had sold the building to

A guy who turned out to be a crook and did jail time, but then it fell Into the um local firehouse. So the it's now the firehouse of Hussein. So it was a great deal and so you had to find a new space. And I had to find a new space and there was an old um tortilla factory in Hood River, which is ten miles from Houston. And we rented out five thousand square feet of this twenty six thousand square foot building and I borrowed the hundred and sixty thousand dollars from Bob. Your brother to to finance a retrofit and uh and he always in the early days was a funder of

Your brother. Yeah. He he had this like business sense. Well, yeah, and he but he had a bigger heart than a business sense. And he was always loaning me money and I would be paying it back. Not always on time, but We paid it back. So I'm curious, I mean, because this really is the This is where the story pivots. This is where

Uh something totally unexpected happens. And I guess there's like a uh these vendors that work with you, they run a catering business, this couple, the Robles, and they're they run like a vegetarian catering business. They're buying tempeh from you. Correct. And they m they're making like this Tofu roast that you kinda come across? What Wha w what's the story? Um yeah. So Hans and Rhonda Robel run the higher taste, which is a

great sandwich company and it's been in business since the early nineteen eighties. And Hans especially, anything he touches turns to gold. He's like one of the best chefs that I've ever met. And he was in nineteen ninety four I was delivering Tempe to him and he was making it was around Thanksgiving These stuffed tofu roasts that

he had been working on and he was selling them about to twenty five or fifty. uh a year and they were a dome of tofu with stuffing in the middle, and I was Always looking for something to eat at Thanksgiving and we had tried all these stuffed pumpkins that kind of collapsed in the oven and gluten roast that were too tough to cut with a chainsaw. So we were failing and then I saw with Hans this is like

Something possible. It's good. And so And Sue had been working on a burger at that point. that we had rejected'cause it tasted like Thanksgiving. And we thought, Mm, I wonder if we make these into not burger shapes but dromets. And so we made them into tempe dromets. You made tempe dromets?

We made drumets. Right. Out of Tempe, right. And and and you went to the Robles and you said what? You said can we maybe collaborate on a thing or Right, and so that first year we bought the the Toeferki to market here in this city. With Hans and his team. And what came with that too? So it was a it was a frozen tofu loaf stuffed with Oh it was like whole wheat bread crumb and cranberry stuffing. It was really delicious. And what else came in the box? And then there was a Tub of gravy that once again Hans had created of uh nutritional yeast gravy. And then there was these eight Tempe dromettes. Vegetarian sitting around. This is not an eight legged turkey.

No. But we didn't know what tofer because in the wild at that point. Mm but But we knew they had eight legs. Wow. I'm just curious because'cause this is important. This this name is super important.

They are making the this like stuffed tofu dome. It's around Thanksgiving time. How do you name it? How do you come up with a name for it? Okay, so I didn't invent the name Tulferki, right? In nineteen eighty one when I was delivering Tempe around Portland There was a tofu sandwich, T O F U R K E Y

And it was being made by King Harvest, local sandwich maker here in Portland. And it was slices of tofu or slices of tofu. Sort of Turkeyish. Right. Just baked or something. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought I would buy those and I I really liked it, but I always love the name. So Firky. A lot of people were

Against the name. But at that point I was ready to change something'cause I had been trying to play it straight as a businessman and make it look like a hippie didn't get within ten feet of this food. Yeah. And Then in and Toferki I mean was more

Whimsical and fun. And I just thought it was more me. I wasn't getting anywhere by pretending to be a businessman, so why not just go toferky. collaborate you uh you decide to sell the first batch of toefer keys I guess you they were in the freezer section and frozen and you sold them for thirty dollars each in nineteen ninety five. That is super expensive.

Did you get pushback from retailers who were like Thirty dollars in the Freezer section, who's gonna buy this? Yeah, we did, you know, but the once again it was the co ops that rally. to embrace the concept and and people loved it. I mean, we put self address stamp postcards in every Toferki that year. We sold eight hundred and eighteen. And the postcards were for feedback? It was for feedback from the customers. People said, Oh my God, I've been waiting twenty years for this product.

And it was just so heartening to Finally I can see my way through this and Through Thanksgiving. Yeah, and through this Thanksgiving thing. I mean, PCC up in uh Seattle was another one that embraced it. They put in a Towferki hotline. They were getting so many orders and they were going crazy for it. I think about

Just about a year after making the first two firkies. You you and the r robles kind of went your separate ways. You you actually no, the second year We were making we went to a tofu maker and Hans had a baked tofu, which baked out some of the Sponginess out of the tofu. And uh

It it didn't look so pretty plated, so It was still a problem, but That was the year that we actually went online and sold uh three hundred of these online. You know that Toferki was one of the first frozen products ever to be sold. On the internet.

The first uh thing that was ever sold online was a pepperoni pizza. In nineteen ninety four, the f the first food was sold online. So this is nineteen ninety six. And we're selling Toferki. And and when did you I mean at a certain point you had to change the recipe, right? Because Tofu alone was not gonna cut it, right?

presumably m kinda make it into a thing that you could slice and really it was it wasn't gonna be spongy. So what did you do? So the third year in nineteen ninety seven a friend of mine who had had a failed satan company called Meet of Wheat

Yeah. Yeah. He had figured out how to extrude these roasts in have stuffing in the middle and they would have Satan on the outside.

And we tried it and we thought It's good, but I wonder what it would be like if we added tofu to it. And so we Added tofu and it mixed the seitan and the tofu.

And it became Toeferky. And that's essentially what it is today. It's essentially the the same thing we ended up Actually buying the recipe from The amazing thing and I guess it's not that amazing when you think about it now, but like because it was called Toeferki, you got all this attention fast. Like the Today Show.

And comedians were joking about it. Oh yeah. And it and you were you did not have an advertising budget. When you saw comedians joking about it and people mocking it. Верю сад? Диджіл? It was more like the right on. 'Cause you know, up until that point, um our marketing and then all of the natural food marketing wasn't very whimsical or funny or fun and this was like

Fun, but It was also in the early days um People kinda took offense to it a little bit'cause you were taking on an iconic Turk American meal and a holiday and everything and Bringing a toeferki to a dinner was always controversial and

Even in into the late nineties and and you're really pivoting now to Toferki, um Your business is not yet profitable. You start this in nineteen eighty one. Correct. You are not yet cash flow positive. Correct. Um How are you Keeping the lights on. How are you keeping things going? You know, well a lot of it was a what they'd call a paper loss.

But it was still lost. We weren't really making money, but we were You know, paying the light bills and paying employees. the end of the day. And and we were Borrowing money where needed. And it was but most of the money that was being borrowed was for investment into equipment and things like that. Did you were you able to, in the late nineties, start to see a light at the end of the tunnel?

I mean, were you thinking, God, I've been doing this for twenty years and we are still not profitable? Or were you at that point saying, You know what? I actually can see where this thing might be headed. Oh yeah. Just from the first response to the toeferki, it just felt so different than anything I had felt before. marketing tempeh that I really felt like This is gonna really turn around at some point.

And it it really did. And you're right that a a lot of the media exposure from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times and At one point I had to put the Washington Post on hold to talk to the New York Times. It was just crazy. our bully pulpit. Kind of it it really then Thanksgiving rolled around the Trees would turn gold and brown and

You know, now you're twenty years in. I mean, how was your business acumen at that point? Mm. Little better. Like managing people, did Sue help you? Did you have more

Yeah, Sue was doing the books at that point and doing the regular job. So we had books. Yeah. No, it it was improving and uh I was becoming less stupid every month. When we turned Profit. Which is like two thousand, two thousand one? Yep. right about then it became really profitable because we brought the production of the toeferki into in house, we were buying it from a manufacturer co manufacturer, and then when we brought it in house and we started making sausage and deli slices

And we went to these same buyers and said, Hey, would you like deli slices? And we found that The toferki in this new recipe sliced really well. So you can use the same recipe. Right. Spice it slightly different. Right, and smoking it. We we smoked it in a real smoke house and created the smoke. Hickory smoke. So when did the slices first come out? Those came out in nineteen ninety eight. And and then the sausages followed? And the sausage followed three years later. And did they become popular pretty much right away? They really did. They really took the industry by storm and we became a happening company.

So when did you actually I don't know, do you remember the point where you I don't know, you woke up and you were like We're making a lot of money. Like this is a this is not me a tree house. Turn out Tempe at a bathtub. Like we're actually making a lot of money. Yeah, it was an odd feeling. Do you remember that.

Would you remember when that happened? Well, you know, when we I do and at the end of the year, you know, and having enough money to g give some nice bonuses and pay off a lot of debt. Was that what, two thousand four, two thousand five? Yeah, right in there, you know, it was really a uh a new world for me. And people that wouldn't talk to us about Tempe were now clamoring for Taufurki and

It took us Tofurki took us from being a regional West Coast distribution to a national distribution. I think today you've got a state of the art factory today in Hood River. We do. It's a lead certified building. You've got two other employees Thing I mean your your your revenue is somewhere between forty and sixty million dollars a year, which is unbelievable. I mean and you're everywhere, right? You're not just a like whole foods and co ops and trader Joe's, you're like Walmart, Target, like right? Right. What we're seeing right now is the mainstreaming of plant based foods. And we're in Twenty seven thousand plus stores worldwide. It's really uh a friendly world for plant based foods now. It's we love to see all great tasting vegan companies succeed. Partly because we're altruists and we're a mission driven company and we want to see plant based foods grow all over the world.

But it there's a business reason too, which is that it's easier for us to place products in a category than mainstream places like Walmart and Target, right? I mean it's correct. Costco. So here's the thing, right? You are entirely family owned. Correct. A hundred percent. You, your brother, maybe some other family members own Tovurky. I have to imagine over the years, certainly over the last few years, you've been approached by private equity, by big companies.

Who have offered you a lot of money to buy you out. Yeah, that would be correct. So Why not cash in? Why not why not take the money and and you know you you worked you lived in a tree house for seven years. You made thirty thousand dollars over nine years. Y I mean right now

Only at this point in your life. Are you actually seeing real money? I mean you could you could be rich beyond your wildest dreams and for the next six generations Why not take it?

I feel like I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams right now, to be honest. I mean to have to be in this business has been, you know, it's got a joy and a great feeling in my life and it's Taken me places that I still I'm I'm able to travel around the world, I'm able to work with non profit

So groups like Vig Annuary that are just getting going over here. I can't think of a better dream at this point in my life. I just feel like the luckiest guy in the world. So so this is important because I've I've been reading uh that you actually cannot produce enough of your products for the demand. It seems like the answer to that challenge is A cache infusion.

to build another production line. Right. We've we have just borrowed some money from uh ethical investor that we really uh feel but it's a loan. It's not an an equity. No, it's a loan. We haven't sold equity yet. Uh keep our equity so that we can keep the mission at the centre of our

lives and so that nobody can tell us what we can do or can't do it. Just out of curiosity, what percentage of your sales now do does Tempe account for? Tempe is roughly ten to fifteen percent of sales, but it's really outpacing some of our other products in growth right now. So we're just doubling. Yeah, I just looked this morning at the new incubator which we're building. It's gonna

double our Tempe capacity. So we're pretty excited about that. I just may have been about four decades early on the Tempe thing. I have to assume that you're not using Christmas lights to make tempeh anymore? That would be correct. All right. So as as you know, Seth, and as as many of you know, I I almost always end my interviews with one final question. I'm just curious to hear how people answer it, you know, uh and we get a bunch of different answers. And so I'm going to ask you this question, which is how much of this story and and the success of this company do you think is is because of your hard work and your work ethic and your skill and your intelligence? And how much how much of this story do you think is just luck? And timing.

Yeah, it's a good question. Um certainly luck and timing come into play. I was lucky enough to jump on this jet stream of natural foods that was just starting up in the nineteen eighties and Nineties and then helping blaze the trail for other meat alternative companies that come on now. But a lot of it, you know, is just persistence and hard work and

Try to be less stupid. Yeah. It's a good strategy. Set to it. Thank you so much.

That's Seth Tibbett, founder of Toeferki. In 2014, Seth's stepson Jamie Athos took over duties as CEO of Toferki. Last year, the company announced it had sold over five million tofu roasts. Oh, and you know what Seth and Jamie and others at the company call real life turkeys? Fake toe for keys. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this live episode of How I Built This. Our show is produced this week by James Delhousie with original music composed by Ramteen Arab Lui. Thanks to our live events team, Ellie Prescott, Nicole Schaler, and John Isabello.

Thanks also to Casey Herman, Rachel Faulkner, JC Howard, Julia Carney, Candace Lim, Niva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.

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