Have We Oversimplified Soy Sauce?

A new bottled sauce brand announced itself to the world online this August. With a colorful, hand-illustrated packaging design and a heavy social media presence, the launch followed a now-familiar playbook for buzzy, youthful-leaning startups in the CPG space. Only the product was not so familiar to this spate of reels and influencer gushes: soy sauce. Called HeyDoh, the brand was co-founded by Christine Liu and food writer Clarissa Wei, and specializes in artisanal Taiwanese soy sauce made using whole black soybeans. 

One might draw parallels to Fishwife and Graza for helping to reintroduce an age-old food product, tinned fish and olive oil, respectively, as a direct-to-consumer brand. Furthermore, HeyDoh launched with two varieties of soy sauce: “Classic,” which is intended “for everything and anything” according to its label, and a smaller, 200ml bottle of “Silky” soy sauce, which is for “drizzling, dipping and finishing.” Which might make a casual, lifelong Kikkoman user stop scrolling and wonder, Do I need a finishing soy sauce, like my fancy olive oil and flaky salt?   

According to Wei, the inclusion of two SKUs for HeyDoh’s initial product launch was “an accident.”