Tofu farmers markets and Broken Cuisine

Our books are on the press, and the ingredients are coming to a farmers market in LA.

Dear Soycerers,

Last Sunday cousin David got married, and on Monday I rushed home to convince an LA farmers market to open a tofu stand.

The booth I pitched to Raw Inspirations, an LA farmers market group.

The idea is an artisan cheese shop, but for tofu. A space to imbibe the spiced, funky aromas of fermented bean curd. To squeeze a stick of spongy tofu between your fingers. To ask any tofu question and have it answered. To immersive yourself in the category of tofu and experience it in all its breadth and depth and beauty.

Raw Inspirations (the market organizer) gave us an oh yeah! We’re now working through their permitting process. Once that’s complete, we will offer curated tofus that are already imported. If we can validate demand, then we will import our own, expand to more markets, and pitch to retailers like Whole Foods. We WILL get these tofus to a place near you.

(For a taste of non-conventional, legacy tofus before then, check out this buying guide.)

---

News from China

We planned to launch Broken Cuisine in April, but our first printer turned out to be unreliable. Misprinted colors. Low quality paper. Zero customer service. Searching for replacements, American print houses kept quoting us terrifying numbers: $15-20/book, at 1000 book minimums… Yikes. Even if we could afford their minimum order sizes, taking into account Amazon selling costs, we’d have to price each copy above $30-35. For a paperback.

Then one afternoon I stumbled upon a printer based in China, with a crystal-clear English website. These guys were quoting us $10/book…

But Print Ninja catered to westerners. I wondered, what about printers serving the Chinese domestic market? Sleuthing around the interweb, I found dozens of factories, ordered samples, and narrowed them down to four high quality candidates. Today, we finally picked our partner.

That means two weeks to print, 30-40 days to ship, a few weeks to promote, then LAUNCH.

It’s about time.