Beanery: Our Production Facility

Beanery? Yes, it’s a real word – and a real place. The Beanery is where Hodo Soy’s artisans produce our soymilk, tofu, and yuba – as well as all of our ready-to-eat dishes. Like a bakery and its bread or a charcuterie and its cured meats, The Beanery is dedicated to Hodo Soy’s expertise – soybeans.

Hodo Soy opened the Beanery in sunny West Oakland, California in Fall 2009. Our historic building was originally built in the 1920s as a candy factory and then became a bakery. All good mojo for Hodo Soy, we believe.

Our airy, new 12,000 square foot production facility is the result of extensive renovation to suit the unique needs of tofu-making. To design and fabricate our special equipment, we worked with one of the oldest remaining tofu equipment producers in Asia.

As two of the most important components in making tofu, we knew we’d need electricity and water, but we worked hard when designing The Beanery to keep our needs for these precious resources to an absolute minimum. To reduce the use of electricity, we invested in a steam boiler to power our milk making unit and our yuba making trays. We also installed large skylights to take advantage of the natural light, further minimizing the use of electricity.

Traditionally, tofu making requires a lot of running water to cool the product down. Instead, we use chilled cooling tanks to quickly bring the temperature of hot tofu to a safe temperature without excessive use of water.

People use many words to describe the Beanery: beautiful, airy, and bright, but we prefer pristine. Here at Hodo Soy our tofu is known for its clean and pure taste. We achieve that, in part, by maintaining a sparklingly clean production facility and superior food safety practices. After all, there’s a reason we wear shiny white boots.