We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Xenia Tombokan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Xenia below.

Xenia, appreciate you joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

We opened our organic tempeh manufacturing facility in October 2019. We started selling our tempeh via word of mouth, to our family and friends’ circles. Our first grocery store client is Yun Loy Asian Market Store, which is located 2 miles from the facility. My friend, Christina Silviago, was helping us promote our products and became one of the account managers for Wiwas Tempeh. She took the initiative to meet with the owner of Yun Loy Asian Market in December 2019. She called me after the meeting and said that the owner refused to carry our products. Both Silvi and I visited the store again the next day. We presented about the quality and health benefits of the tempeh, how our tempeh is different in taste and texture, and how the product is responsibly manufactured. We showed all our certifications, such as FDA registration, USDA organic certification, and vegan certification. When the owner finally said, “ok let’s try but we will not pay until it is sold”, I felt so much joy. I called my business partners and shared the good news. Today, 3.5 years later, Yun Loy Asian Market is still one of top sellers of our products.

Xenia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The struggle of getting quality and authentic tempeh in the USA is one of the reasons we start WIWAS Tempeh. We are motivated to promote tempeh to our family and friends for healthier life style. Our passion is to bring healthy traditional Indonesian dishes into mainstream North American culture. Tempeh is one of Indonesia’s most iconic foods that dated back a few centuries ago. Since we started the company and selling our products, we have been receiving excellent reviews from our customers.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my business partner, Yenny Malikasim, in Raleigh, NC in the beginning of 2009. We both loved to eat tempeh and had dreamt of being entrepreneurs. We had so many ideas about business, and one of them is manufacturing tempeh. We kept connected after we split our ways from North Carolina. Yenny went to California and I went to Texas. Like in NC, we could not find the quality tempeh that tastes like back home in Indonesia. So, we keep exploring some opportunities to manufacture tempeh. We want to introduce to our friends of various ethnicities how good tempeh should taste. When we finally found the prospect of opening a tempeh business, we both were thrilled. We consistently meet virtually for brainstorming, planning, and ultimately executing the business.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We think that the quality of our tempeh itself builds the reputation within our market. We can change the perception of people who are initially not keen of tempeh to become in love of tempeh, due to our tempeh’s freshness, texture, and taste.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wiwastempeh.com
• Instagram: wiwastempeh
• Facebook: Wiwas Tempeh
• Linkedin: Wiwas Tempeh
• Youtube: Wiwas Tempeh
• Yelp: Wiwas Tempeh