Kikkoman® Soy Sauce.
Brewed and Loved in the USA for 50 Years.
This year, we’re celebrating our 50th year of brewing Kikkoman Soy Sauce in the U.S. And that’s just one chapter of a story that goes back more than three centuries.
Our golden anniversary of brewing Soy Sauce in the United States is a major milestone—one of many in our company’s long history. The first of those actually happened way back in the mid-1600s, when a resourceful family set up a soy sauce brewery in the farming community of Noda along the Edo River, not far from what is now Tokyo. Today, nearly twenty generations later, the descendants of that family still run what has become Kikkoman, one of the world’s leading soy sauce brands.
Bringing soy sauce to America
In the early years of the twentieth century, we started exporting our soy sauce from Japan to the United States. For decades, we worked hard to show Americans that soy sauce—which was then considered a specialty seasoning—could actually be used to enhance all kinds of everyday foods.
By the 1970s, we had built demand for soy sauce in North America to an all-time high. But we were still exporting it from Japan, and that was a complicated and costly process. The soybeans and wheat were actually grown in America and then shipped to Japan, where the traditional brewing process would take six months. The finished soy sauce would then travel back across the Pacific in bulk containers to a bottling plant in Oakland, California, where it was packaged for distribution throughout the United States. It was time for a bold new approach.
Breaking ground—and making history—in the U.S.
So, in 1973, Kikkoman made the momentous decision to build our own production facility in North America—our first plant outside Japan. Just as that original family had chosen the modest farming community of Noda three centuries earlier, Kikkoman settled on Walworth, Wisconsin, a small town ideally situated in the heart of America’s fertile soybean and wheat country.
It was a major investment and a risky proposition, but it paid off. The Walworth plant would become the largest soy sauce production facility in the western world.
And back in the early ’70s when all the now-famous Japanese automotive and electronics companies were just beginning to think about manufacturing in America, Kikkoman’s Wisconsin plant made history as the first major production facility built by a Japanese company in the United States.
Over the last 50 years…
We’ve been warmly welcomed by the people of Walworth and Folsom, California, where we built a second production plant in 1998. We thank the thousands of Kikkoman team members and the residents of those communities who have supported us and contributed to our success over the years.
Coming Together…
We’ve also been welcomed by home cooks and chefs. You have given us a place of honor in your kitchens, at your tables, and in your hearts, and for that we are truly grateful. Thank you for making us America’s #1 Soy Sauce—and for 50 years of love.
50 years in 30 seconds!
