Noodle business has come a long way
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hidehito Uki was only 19 years old but he knew his way around a noodle.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
What he didn't know was how to sell them in Hawai'i. And he wasn't going to get any help as an outsider from Japan trying to start a noodle factory in a crowded industry.
Flora Luga is a noodle production assistant at Sun Noodle, the Kalihi-based factory founded 22 years ago by Hidehito Uki. Uki's willingness to customize his recipes for restaurants played a big part in the success of his business.
Twenty-two years later, Uki's Kalihi-based Sun Noodle company dominates the noodle business and his 100 different products can now be found aboard Japanese jetliners and in hospitals, in every Hawai'i supermarket, at Zippy's restaurants and on the Mainland.
Uki frames his sentences carefully but doesn't hesitate to speak with self-deprecating honesty.
"Everything unexpected," said Uki, now 41. "I did not know anything."
Uki and his wife, Keiko, drive a Mercedes and a Lexus today. But it wasn't long ago that Uki arrived in Honolulu with no business plan.
Sun Noodle's rise from startup to behemoth is the result of good timing, finding a niche among the then-exploding population of Japanese tourists and Uki's willingness to customize his recipes for individual restaurants.
He has also won over customers with a soft-spoken, eager-to-please attitude.
"Mr. Uki-san is really fair and very nice," said Charles Higa, Zippy's 72-year-old founder. "He always calls to see if I have problems and I say, 'If I have a problem I'll call you.' "
Last year Higa faced rising prices for his saimin noodles and made the painful decision to find a new saimin vendor for the first time in 36 years. Uki — who was already making Zippy's chow fun and yaki soba — worked the hardest of the bidders and came up with the best price, Higa said.
"Mr. Uki tested so many different recipes," Higa said. "He tried over and over and over and over and over and over for a month or two. I never saw a guy work so hard to get our business."
Uki's bid would save Zippy's $1 million a year, a proposal that another company later matched.
"But Mr. Uki really was sincere," Higa said. "And I thought I would rather do business with him because he was so fair."
Uki grew up around noodles.
His father, Senjiro Uki, ran the family-owned Ikeda Noodle Co. in Tochigi, Japan, and taught his son the business. As a teenager, Hidehito moved over to a sprawling udon company in Tokushima prefecture where he worked the production line mixing dough, cutting noodles and packaging the finished product.
When Hidehito was 19, his father became partners in a deal to start a Honolulu noodle company. Senjiro shipped three used pieces of equipment — a mixer, loader and cutter — worth a total of $15,000 and made plans to launch a Hawai'i company.
The equipment was sitting on the dock in Honolulu when Senjiro's partner suddenly pulled out. So Senjiro made his young son a business proposition.
Senjiro would invest $50,000 to open a factory and Hidehito would take it from there.
"I was 19 years old at the time and I never been to any foreign country," Uki said. "So I was really interested."
In 1981, Honolulu had 22 other noodle companies. Many of them were started before World War II and had already locked up much of the local restaurant business.
Uki churned out udon, ramen, yaki soba and Okinawan soba from a 1,500 square foot building on Hoe Street in Kalihi Kai and saw bigger potential in the Japanese restaurants opening up to serve the flood of Japanese tourists that had begun arriving in Hawai'i.
Uki, the only Japanese national running a Honolulu noodle company, visited Japanese restaurants and ramen shops with samples of his noodles and offered to tweak the recipes in any way. The first year he made $20,000 in sales.
"Whenever open up new restaurant, I go there," Uki said. "It was easy to communicate. And our speciality was to make them custom-made noodle."
Annual sales went up at least 10 percent most years. He bought new equipment, hired more people and expanded his varieties of udon, ramen, gyoza and won ton pi. In 1992 Uki moved into his current, 4,500-square-foot Kalihi factory on Colburn Street that houses $1 million in equipment and 27 employees. In 1997, he expanded into specialty dried pastas aimed at tourists that feature Hawai'i flavors such as taro, coffee, mango, macadamia nut and nori.
By 2001, Sun Noodle was bringing in $3 million a year in annual sales. But Uki still dreamed of one more account. "Since I started business in Hawai'i," Uki said, "I always wanted Zippy's."
The first saimin noodle Uki came up with was "OK," Higa said. "I had people taste it. They were so used to the other saimin, that they preferred that one."
Uki kept trying and finally came up with a new noodle that was both flavorful and better at holding its texture in the saimin broth, Higa said.
"His doesn't get soggy, even if you have it in the bowl for some time," Higa said. "His is still firm and me, myself, I like firm noodles."
Today, Sun Noodle delivers 5,000 saimin servings a day — or 1,250 pounds — to Hawai'i's 22 Zippy's restaurants. It's by far the biggest of Sun Noodle's accounts.
Uki already has plans to spread his noodles to even more stores and restaurants on the Mainland. But as the company continues to grow, one thing won't change.
"Only one salesman," he said. "Me."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
