04-04-2025
Simmering with Ambition, Noodle Newcomers Stir Up Ramen for the First Time In 50 Years
Kevin Lee was just the sort of young man any parent would be proud of. With a business degree from the University of California, Berkeley, he was a decade into a finance career and on the cusp of making partner at his firm. By any measure, he had a bright future.
Then things changed.
"I remember coming home one weekend and telling my parents I was leaving this venture-capital career track to start a ramen company," Lee said.
Mortified, his parents drove him to a nearby grocery and marched him up and down the aisles arrayed with packets of instant noodles. They demanded to know: Aren't there enough ramen brands already?
Yes, there were-but not the kind that Lee and his business partner Kevin Chanthasiriphan were planning on making.
Ever since Nissin introduced Cup O' Noodles (today, just Cup Noodles) to America in 1971, a handful of imported brands have held dominion over the category by charging low prices for noodles that are very tasty and, much of the time, very bad for you.
"Nissin, Maruchin, and Shin have dominated the U.S.," said Lee. "Their formulations are all the same-and the nutritionals are all horrible."
Lee's brand Immi would be different. Its plant-based ramen promises 22 grams of protein. Its 6 grams of carbs are pretty low (Cup Noodles' chicken has 41 grams, for instance.) And while a container of Immi still packs 890 mg of sodium, that's an improvement over, say, the 1,310 you'll find in Shin brand ramen.
As a contender, Immi is not alone. Beginning around five years ago, a brigade of hopefuls marched into the category, including Momofuku, Trader Joe's, Mike's Mighty Good, Ramen Express, and Chef Woo. These brands are determined to draw customers with their promises of culinary refinement and lower sodium.
The trick, of course, is getting people to pay for it.
Lee's charges aren't without merit. Inside a 59¢, 2.25-ounce cup of chicken Maruchan is 12 grams of fat and 1,190 mg of sodium-over half the daily limit suggested by the FDA. (Maruchin did not respond to ADWEEK's request for comment).
Nutrition profiles like that didn't stop Americans from eating some $3.2 billion worth of instant noodles in 2024, according to Euromonitor data. Thanks in part to the pandemic, the 4.6 billion servings of ramen Americans ate in 2019 grew to 5.1 billion in 2020, according to Fortune Business Insights. And they haven't stopped. Imarc data shows that consumers scarfed down 6 billion servings of ramen last year, and predicts that consumption will increase by 1.7% annually through 2033.
But newcomer ramen brands see promise in more than numbers. If a variety simply called 'shrimp' can find a following, they reason, there's a market for more authentic recipes, too.
"We're not trying to compete with the 25¢ ramen packets," said Marguerite Mariscal, cofounder of Momofuku Goods, which introduced its ramen in 2021. The value-priced brands already on store shelves "serve their purpose," she said. "But we saw a gap between regular instant ramen and what you can get in a restaurant-especially for people who care about flavor but don't have the time to simmer broth for eight hours.
Not that the legacy brands don't have zesty flavors, but Nissin's Cheddar Cheese and Maruchan's Creamy Chicken are clearly aimed at middle-American palates. Newer entrants prefer to play the authenticity card. Momofuku's ramen "build[s] flavor from pantry ingredients-soy sauce, chili paste, sesame oil," Mariscal said. "There's no mystery powder in our packets."
'We created Mike's Mighty Good because we saw a gap in the marketplace,' added Mike's cofounder Rita Vinnicombe. 'There was a big difference between the incredible ramen available in ramen bars and instant products in stores.' Mike's varieties (about $3 a cup) include kimchi and pork tonkotsu.
Ramen's upstarts are also marketing healthy ingredients-or, at least, a reduction of the bad ones.
Instant ramen is definitionally indulgent. In 1958, Nissin Foods founder Momofuku Ando sprayed raw noodles with chicken soup and then fried them in tempura oil. The precooking made an instant, self-stable product possible. But deep frying means fat. Wheat flour is high in carbs. And sodium? That's been inescapable.
When Cup Noodles hit American shelves 53 years ago, fewer people worried about these drawbacks. But in recent years, Nissin has gone back to the kitchen.
"We're looking at air-dried noodles," Nissin president and CEO Brian Huff told ADWEEK. "You take the oil out and look at reducing sodium. There are a lot of great technologies today that [let] you take out 50% of the sodium and not lose any of the taste."
Shin's PR manager Kevin Chang said that his company also makes healthier varieties and rejected the contentions of critics like Lee. "Unlike what minor noodle companies suggest, we are not producing low-cost, unhealthy products," Chang said. "However, we must maintain a business strategy that stays true to the instant-noodle category."
But the tradeoffs between health and taste apply to noodles as they do to all other foods.
"If you're going to take a noodle and make it high protein, low carb, high fiber, it comes with taste and texture sacrifices," Lee said.
He should know. When Immi debuted in 2021, its noodles were stiff, tough, and a flop with customers. Today, "we're on version five of the product," Lee said. "It's improved dramatically."
Starting in 2020, Palmetto Gourmet Foods founder Reza Soltanzadeh saw so much potential in higher-quality ramen that he'd eventually create three new brands: the popularly priced Ramen Express (vegetarian and free of palm oil and MSG), Chef Woo (high protein), and Ramen Noodles by Chef Ramsay, a Gordon Ramsay collaboration that features ingredients like black garlic and shiitake mushrooms.
A veteran food scientist, Soltanzadeh was confident he could produce a healthier ramen. The tricky part has been identifying customers who won't balk at the higher cost. For him, that's not a matter of convincing impoverished undergrads to spend more, it's addressing the consumer who's already buying a $7 iced caffè latte to drop $23.99 on a six-pack of Ramsay.
"I'm not comparing Chef Woo to a Nissin cup that's 59¢," Soltanzadeh said. "I'm looking at a product from a price-elasticity perspective."
These two distinct price categories help explain why old-guard instant ramen brands may not feel directly threatened by the newcomers.
"Smaller instant noodle companies such as Immi, Momofuku, and Mike's Mighty Good can be understood as targeting niche markets within the instant noodle industry by launching healthy and premium products," Shin's Chang said.
Huff, for his part, welcomes the newcomers. Sure, they may have more swagger, but they're never going to undercut Cup Noodles. "It's hard to beat a meal that fills your satiety for 30¢," he said. "You can't do anything today for 30¢."
"When we first launched, people were like, 'this is blasphemy-a $6 ramen,'" Lee added. "Luckily, over the years, we've been able to bring that down. At Target, now, you can find us at $3.99."
Is it working? Research from marketing analytics firm Tracksuit shows that while Immi trails its mainstream competitors in awareness, it ranks first as a premium contender.
It also tastes good enough to have converted Lee's most important customer-his father. After the elder Lee refused to even try Immi for two years, he texted his son.
"I ate your ramen for breakfast yesterday and today," he said. "I am liking it."
