Okay, fine, I’ll admit it. I love instant ramen. When I’ve had a bad day or a sleepless night, nothing soothes my soul like a bowl of dirt-cheap, chemical-laden, carb-heavy noodles cooked up in two minutes flat. But like many fans, I’ve often felt guilty about chowing down on this highly processed food.
Enter Immi. The newly launched startup is on a mission to create a healthy version of instant ramen. The noodles are packed with 31 grams of plant protein from pumpkin seeds and fava beans (compared to 6 grams in traditional ramen), only 9 grams of net carbs, and seasonings made from natural spices. But at $6.25 per serving, Immi’s noodles are about 10 times the price of the competition. Will lovers of instant ramen bite? (Or rather, slurp?)
More than 100 billion servings of ramen noodles are sold annually in a $42 billion market. “Many members of our own families have health problems that are partly caused by diet,” Lee says. “They’re prediabetic and have hypertension, which can be directly traced to food.”
I’m not alone, according to Immi’s founders, who conducted focus groups before launching the brand. “There are many people who grew up loving ramen but have stopped eating it entirely because it’s unhealthy,” Lee says. “But these people are still nostalgic about the food. This is precisely who we’re targeting.”
Ando managed to create a supply chain and factory to keep prices low. Immi’s founders are finding a low price point to be more of a challenge. This comes down to their ingredients, particularly the plant proteins, which are expensive. But it is also due to the manufacturing process.
The majority of the world’s instant ramen is made by three companies—Nissin and Toyo Suisan from Japan; and Lotte Foods from South Korea—which have enormous factories that churn out millions of packages per month. Lee and Chanthasiriphan reached out to some of these factories to leverage their scale, but they were turned down because the owners didn’t believe there was a market for healthy ramen. “Ramen is so cheap that companies only make money by selling in volume,” Chanthasiriphan says. “Our business model didn’t make any sense to the factories.”
In the end, the pair found a manufacturing facility in the United States that does not specialize in ramen. Throughout the product development process, Immi invited thousands of people to provide feedback and insights about the ramen. One of the top comments they received is that the noodles are far more expensive than they’d like. So Lee and Chanthasiriphan are now focused on driving down the price without compromising on the nutrition.
“The original instant noodles were a way to feed a lot of people after [World War II], when there was a lot of poverty,” Chanthasiriphan says. “Our goal is to go beyond just putting food in people’s bellies, but making sure this food is also nutritious.”