A Maine-based tofu manufacturer that has expanded rapidly over the last decade is poised for even more growth as it completes a construction project that will double the size of its factory.
After opening in Camden in 2008, Heiwa Tofu moved into its current space at 201 West St. in Rockport eight years later. Since then, its production of the soybean-based food product has exploded, from 2,500 pounds per week in 2016 to up to 15,000 pounds per week now.
The growth of Heiwa Tofu, which packages its goods for retail in stores including Hannaford and Whole Foods, has exemplified how some Maine companies are taking advantage of the growing demand among U.S. consumers for more nutritious or plant-based diets.
“When I first started the business, I thought I would make tofu one day a week, and then do other work and piece it together,” said the company’s founder, Jeff Wolovitz, who originally started the operation while working as a high school science teacher. “But then it just kept going and going and going. More people wanted it.”
Wolovitz attributes the growing popularity of Heiwa Tofu, in part, to the smooth quality of its end product.
The company is now going through with the expansion of its facility, which will grow its production space from about 2,800 square feet now to almost 6,000. The project is expected to be completed early next year.
The business currently employs 10 people, but the facility has gotten “a little tight,” Wolovitz said. The expansion will allow it to hire several additional workers and install more advanced tofu processing equipment, as well as a solar array on its roof.
Wolovitz expects the company’s output to increase with the additional space. Currently, the plant produces up to 15,000 pounds of tofu weekly, but with the planned expansion, the company hopes to boost production by 50 percent, reaching around 20,000 pounds weekly by the end of 2026.
Over the next few years, Wolovitz anticipates nearly doubling his company’s current capacity, ultimately reaching 25,000 to 30,000 pounds per week. He hopes that additional scale will help the company reach a more sustainable point.
“We’ve slowly been able to, every year, eke out like a little more production capacity and get a little more efficient with what we do,” said Wolovitz, “but we haven’t quite found that sweet spot for profitability and being able to meet demand.”
The cost of the current expansion is roughly $1.5 million, which Heiwa is partly paying for with federal grant funding that has been administered by the state. One of those grants was meant to support companies that use Maine-grown materials in their production.
Heiwa Tofu processes about 5,800 pounds of soybeans a week, about a third of which come from farmers in Aroostook County, qualifying it for that funding. The rest come from upstate New York.
Once it makes the tofu, it packages and sells it in stores throughout the Northeast, including supermarkets, natural food stores, co-ops and independent grocers. Mainers can also buy what are called its “factory seconds” — or tofu products that don’t make it to retail — at its production facility for a discounted price.
Reflecting on the business, Wolovitz said that he never expected it to grow like it has. He started it in 2008, working out of a kitchen in a rented garage space in Camden, using inexpensive equipment from another local tofu maker and following instructions from a manual written in the 1970s. He visited a tofu producer in Boston to learn more and juggled part-time teaching.
He later moved the business to Belfast before taking over the current space in Rockport in 2016.
“I wanted to start a business as a food processor. I had this idea to take local and regional products and add value,” Wolovitz said. “I wanted it to be something nourishing and wholesome, a pantry item, and I started looking for niches to fill, what would meet this criteria, and tofu emerged as one of them.”
