So-ya like tofu? Rise in alternative diets good business for Vancouver company

It's impossible not to notice the smell of tofu in Peter Joe's office. In fact, it's the first thing you notice once you step inside the Sunrise Soya Foods building.

Joe is the CEO of Canada's largest tofu-maker. If he doesn't seem to mind the mildly-sweet smell because to him, it's the smell of success. 

His company is growing. Last week, Sunrise Soya Foods opened a new factory in Delta. British Columbia's estimated 83,000 vegans and 139,776 vegetarians might have something to do with that growth.

"The health-food trend of vegetarian and vegan people who are into healthier lifestyles, helped the growing trend of tofu," he says.

Even so, Joe admits he eats all types of food: "Once in a while, we do enjoy a nice steak."

Joe gives some credit to Vancouver's hippies for his company's success as it expanded from its original market in Chinatown. Sales started to climb when The Naam was a relatively new restaurant and 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, home to many of the city's hippies, was known as "Rainbow Road."

"The only customers we had [when we opened in the 1950s] were from Vancouver's Chinatown. We supplied daily fresh blocks of tofu to the restaurants and stores" Joe says. "Tofu became a bit more known for health-food stores in the early '70s. And then in the '80s, with our new facilities, we were able to supply to the supermarkets."

Sunrise-Soya Foods is a family business. Leslie Joe founded the company in a small room in the back of a Downtown Eastside market in the 1950s. Now, his son Peter runs the tofu business, and his three daughters run the market. Still, Leslie, 84, drops by the market most days.

"I come here every day, to see how my three daughters are doing. I tell them what's the right price to sell things," he says.

"I think this is what keeps him alive," says Sally Joe, his daughter. "He gets excited when he sees customers. He always brags that he actually built this store. That was his claim to fame."

Another daughter Jenny Joe agrees. "He's always going to do this, because it's still his baby, and he can't let it go," she says, "It's nice to have him around sometimes."

Leslie is proud of his family business. "My children work hard like me. All my four children," he says.

To hear the complete interview with Leslie Joe at Sunrise-Soya Foods click on the audio link below:

See other stories in Growing Vegan, a multiplatform CBC Vancouver series that explores how the business of veganism thrives in B.C.

• Veganism may seem popular, but food experts say the future is flexitarian
• A naturopath told this bodybuilder to go vegan. He laughed then did it
• How 'vegan friendly' beer highlights lack of labelling regulations for plant-based products