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

About this episode

Caitlin Bricker interviews Christine Liu and Clarissa Wei about their single origin soy sauce brand HEYDOH and the challenges they faced in the market.

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Caitlin Bricker sits down with Christine Liu and Clarissa Wei, co-founders of HEYDOH — a single origin soy sauce brand built to fill a gap in the American grocery market. The global soy sauce market is worth $40–59 billion, yet there is not a single origin option on the shelves of America's largest grocery stores. HEYDOH is here to change that. Clarissa is a food journalist who has spent 15 years covering Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine and has been based in East Asia for eight years. Christine is a data scientist from big tech who originally said no to the idea — until a factory visit in Taiwan and her first sip changed everything. Together they run what they call a 24-hour company: Clarissa in Taiwan, Christine in Brooklyn, an introvert running marketing and an extrovert running numbers. Caitlin and the co-founders dig into the origin of HEYDOH, how consumer surveys shaped the product lineup, and the packaging disaster that led to a complete rebrand — and ultimately three Dieline Awards including Best in Food. They also get into the operational realities of shipping glass bottles, how a 25% breakage rate got fixed, and the creative…

People in this episode

Host: Caitlin Bricker

Guests: Christine Liu, Clarissa Wei

Topics covered

• single origin soy sauce
• branding
• entrepreneurship
• food journalism
• consumer surveys
• packaging
• D2C shipping

Keywords

• soy sauce
• branding
• entrepreneurship
• food industry
• consumer research
• packaging design
• D2C

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HEYDOH

Places: Taiwan, Brooklyn, America, US

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