A 40 year-old brand utilizing a 100 year-old recipe may seem like an odd choice for an “emerging brand” award, but when it comes to the natural channel, and the U.S. market, noodle company A-Sha Foods is just getting started. Founded in Taiwan, the company made the jump to the American market in 2011, bringing its 18-hour “air dried noodles” to a new group of shoppers via a one-store launch.
And the line has won over even the most discerning palates: the noodle packs in chef David Chang’s Momofuku CPG line are produced by A-Sha.
A-Sha’s growth has been slow but steady, with the company launching on Amazon years after its U.S. expansion. Fast forward a decade and the brand gained distribution in club (Costco), conventional grocery (Safeway, Albertson), mass retailers (Target, Walmart). This year, A-Sha made the leap into natural, launching into Whole Foods Market and Sprouts. The former even included A-Sha’s kits as an example of one of their 2024 Trends to Watch, “Noodle News.”
In addition to private label offerings, collaborations have been a key part of A-Sha’s growth strategy. This year it launched a lineup of co-branded noodles with Hello Kitty and debuted two Whole Foods market-exclusive SKUs featuring BT21, a group of eight animated characters co-created by South Korean boy band BTS.
