Azabu Foods is keeping the US launch of its Umami Everything Japanese-inspired sauce deliberately small to stay in step with production capacity.
The company soft-launched Umami Everything earlier this year and is gearing up for a broader retail rollout starting this fall.
Founder Brendan Cravitz, an experienced CPG marketer, said the inspiration to launch Azabu Foods came after years of working behind the scenes at other brands. Now, he said he wants “to do my own thing.”
A sauce years in the making
The idea for Umami Everything has been in the making for over a decade and reflects Cravitz’s deep ties to Japan, where he has lived for the past decade.
“Azabu itself is from the area that I live in, in Tokyo. So Azabu Foods is from Azabu Moto, this area in central Tokyo,” he explained.
Cravitz first tested the sauce at the Winter Fancy Food Show in Las Vegas last year.
“I thought it would take a lot longer, and I had the opportunity to actually start in [the] last Fancy Food Show I planned to do, just a test, just to see if people like the product,” he said. “The response was really great. So I went all in and really focused on Umami Everything,” he added.
Exploring umami sources beyond MSG
The sauce comes in two varieties: original and spicy. The original is “very savory, very miso and tamari forward,” while the spicier version includes Japanese red chili and sansho, an ingredient Cravitz describes as “similar to [Szechuan] peppercorn, but with a strong citrus note.”
He added, “It’s really exciting to see people kind of go on a journey,” where “they get this flavor they haven’t experienced before.”
Drawing on natural umami sources like mushrooms, kelp, algae and miso, Cravitz developed the sauce through years of trial and error. He worked with many umami forward brands where he learned about mushrooms, kelp or algae as umami sources.
Soft launching strategy
Umami Everything is currently in a soft launch, selling at a single Southern California store where it has already sold out multiple times.
Cravitz, who specializes in marketing, has done “very little marketing” since the sauces are not yet widely available.
“I’m not trying to build something where people can’t get the product,” he admits.
That will change this fall, said Cravitz, who explained when Azabu Foods will expand into Bristol Farms and Market of Choice in the Pacific Northwest.
Cravitz said he plans to “go all in” on social media, events and demos where he intends to spend more time “introducing the product personally and really explaining these different flavors from Japan,” he said.
Cravitz’s marketing strategy is not just to promote a condiment, but to bring people closer to the ingredients and culture behind it.
“I want to do longer form entertainment, also education,” that takes viewers “behind the scenes to show how some of our core ingredients are made, or going to work with the farmers and show how they’re picked,” he explained.
‘Every cent matters’
On the operations side, Cravitz is staying deliberately lean and advises other founders to do the same.
“It really is, especially in the beginning, important to move slow and make sure you understand the most important part, which is your costs,” he said.
“Every cent matters,” he added.
While Azabu Foods is currently bootstrapped, Cravitz is open to a strategic partnership aligned with his mission to showcase Japanese ingredients and flavors.
Meeting market demand for global flavors
Cravitz sees Azabu’s Japanese-forward flavors aligning with a broader trend in retail, where global sauces are increasingly mainstream.
“There’s so many more international sauces that ... I don’t see them just placed in the ethnic section or in specialty markets. I see the Whole Foods of the world, and all the larger retailers really embracing these brands.”
He added, “I see some of the talks and a lot of the excitement about a lot of these global flavors,” and ”I like seeing all these other people, all these different flavors, from, again, Southeast Asia all the way up to Northern Asia. It’s really exciting to see, and I look forward to watching them grow, and then hopefully I can grow along with them.”
