Producing Culinary Diversity

Having a large, prominent university as its centerpiece fairly ensures Lawrence’s status as one of the most diverse cities in the Midwest, if not the United States. A sizeable population of international students, many with family members who have moved here with them—as well as those who came to study at the University of Kansas years ago and stayed after graduation—supplies Lawrence with a multiplicity of beliefs, lifestyles and cultures that only enhances the city as a melting pot and a place where people of different backgrounds come together and learn from each other for the common good.

Then there’s the food.

It seems an entire world of culinary offerings has sprung up in the city as a natural by-product of its diverse population, not to mention what seems another of Lawrence’s taglines: its reputation as one of the hippest towns around. Some of those delicious international foods are manufactured right here.

Some, like Mohammad Al-zaiti, president of Mediterranean Market & Café, started making food from their homeland because they missed it and couldn’t find it locally. Finding his offerings popular with locals both international and native to the area, Al-zaiti simply decided to stay after graduating with his electrical engineering degree and has been selling authentic Mediterranean food out of his café and market for nearly 25 years.

Other food manufacturing companies were created more as attempts to help the local population eat healthy and live sustainably for the good of the people and the environment. When Central Soyfoods LLC, which has been making and selling tofu in Lawrence since 1978, was in threat of closing a couple of years ago, local couple Martin and Danielle Maigaard bought it and, despite challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, are producing and selling up to a ton of tofu per week.

In 2015, Sarah Salzman began fermenting locally produced produce, seconds that otherwise would have been discarded. A little more than a year ago, she converted the garage of her home into a fermentation facility where she creates tasty sauerkraut, kimchi, hot sauce and miso.

If you wish to eat healthy or simply try and enjoy an alternative fare, all while knowing much of it comes from ingredients and manufacturing processes right here in town, Lawrence is the place to be.

“I’ve worked in the local food scene for a long time … ” says Martin Maigaard, owner/operator of Central Soyfoods LLC. “It’s good to see the products on the shelves that came from local sources. I think it’s good for the local image.

“It’s great to have a regional food system, and to have the hub of that in Lawrence is a great community draw,” he says.

Mohammad Ak-zaiti, owner of Mediterranean Café filling containers for local grocery stores; A fine selection of homemade Baklawa, a Lebanese Baklava

Creating a Taste of Home

Mohammad Al-zaiti arrived in Lawrence from his native Jordan in the 1990s intending to study to become an electrical engineer. He loved the town and university, but at the same time missed certain aspects of home, like family and food.

“When I got here, I started looking for Mediterranean food but couldn’t find any,” he says. “So I decided to make it myself. I quickly discovered that many of my friends and classmates liked it.”

Al-zaiti thought this might be a way to make a little spending money while in college. He says he started small, making and selling Mediterranean food out of a tiny space on south Iowa Street. A couple of years later, something happened that would permanently change the course of his life.

“A realtor came to me and said he had this space, it already had a walk-in freezer in it … . It was move-in ready,” Al-zaiti says.

The space was in a strip mall at the popular and busy corner of Kasold Drive and Bob Billings Parkway. Al-zaiti moved his business there in 2000, and Mediterranean Market & Café is there to this day.

Al-zaiti is quick to point out there are many facets to the business. There’s the café, which offers traditional Mediterranean fare such as falafel, baba ghannouj, hummus, shawarma beef, chicken and lamb gyros, all made with care from homemade ingredients. In the same room as the café is the market, a grocery store stocked with hummus, olive oils, beans, grains, nuts and a plethora of assortments of other native foods.

“Each country (bordering the Mediterranean Sea) puts its own touch on the foods they consume,” Al-zaiti says. “The farther you get from the old country, portions get bigger, there’s more fat in it.”

His business also distributes much of the food it creates, such as hummus, feta dips and feta cheese, to local grocery stores and food-service providers.

“The KU Union buys halal meat from us for its Muslim students,” says Al-zaiti, who handles all distribution himself. “We supply restaurants and small businesses with products like olives and olive oil.”

Early on, he says his clientele consisted mostly of international students and faculty, along with a few local community members. But that client base has only grown in time.

“At first, maybe there weren’t that many (community residents),” he says. “But now, there are all these food channels on TV. As time progressed, people learned more about how good a Mediterranean diet is for you. It’s not processed. We use simple ingredients.

“It’s been a learning process,” Al-zaiti continues. “People come here and learn about the food, learn about cultures. It seems like a lot of people move here from Chicago and New York, where there are Mediterranean places on every corner.

“It’s healthy food meant to keep people healthy and away from medicine,” he adds. “Once you try good quality food, there’s no going back.”

The tofu forming process with Martin and Marshall; The tofu form going into a chill tank to cool before cutting and packaging;
At right: 18lb block of tofu prior to being cut for packaging.

A Higher-Quality Tofu

Central Soyfoods’ Maigaard had been working in the food industry in Lawrence and outside of Kansas for the last quarter century and, in the process, had grown fond of the products Dave and Susan Millstein had produced at the business since 2003. When he learned the Millsteins planned on closing the facility, it didn’t take long for him to reach out.

“It had been a Lawrence staple for a long time,” Maigaard says. “I was a huge fan of the products. Fresh, handmade tofu is so different and so much better than some of the more widely sold tofu.”

Maigaard and his wife leapt into action and bought the company. They couldn’t have made the move at a more interesting and challenging time, as the COVID-19 pandemic would soon be firing up early in 2020.

“When we purchased the company, close to 50 percent of our sales were restaurant sales,” Maigaard says. “Within the first four months, we lost all those sales.”

The Maigaards and Central Soyfoods turned the focus to expanding sales in retail stores in Lawrence and Kansas City.

“There was actually increased demand, because national brands were having production issues,” he says. “We reached more customers as we were able to keep our products on the grocery shelves as our national competitors were grappling with production or supply chain issues.

“For the most part, we’ve taken advantage of being a local producer and remaining close to all our accounts,” Maigaard adds.

Central Soyfoods also has thrived by keeping things simple and local. The Maigaards have shifted all their focus on tofu, foregoing, at least for a while, production of other products such as tempeh. They offer three types of tofu: traditional firm nigari tofu, hickory-smoked and hot chili tofu. They started a partnership in the spring of 2021 with Ioway Farms, in White Cloud, Kansas, which grows 33 acres of non-GMO soybeans for Central Soyfoods using regenerative and organic growing practices.

In Lawrence, Central Soyfoods sells and distributes to The Merc, KU Dining, Zen Zero, Ramen Bowls and Thai Diner, while also selling and distributing to Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, Bluebird Bistro, The Fix, The Merc in Kansas City, Kansas, and Nature’s Own, among others in the Kansas City area.

The company does all this in a 3,000-square-foot production and warehouse space with the Maigaards, Danielle Maigaard’s brother and one delivery driver, producing between 1,700 and 2,000 pounds of tofu per week.

“We’re hoping to have a 25 percent increase in tofu sales this year,” Maigaard says. “We should add one to two employees by the end of 2022.”

Maigaard says he’s seen the taste for tofu grow over the years from being associated mostly with Asian cuisine or vegetarian or vegan diets to more mainstream use, particularly as a healthy protein substitute.

“People are finding more and more ways to use tofu as an additional protein source,” he says.

Still, even as the popularity of tofu grows, Maigaard says Central Soyfoods won’t be growing too much.

“We’re a small, family-run tofu shop,” he says. “We have plans to grow, but not so much that we take away from the product. Integrity of the product is something we’ll never give up. We’ll always remain a handmade tofu producer.”

Top to bottom: Sarah Salzman (owner/fermentista), Sydney Ruiz Krehbiel (fermentista) and Amy Glattly (fermentista) in the Wild Alive
certified kitchen converted from a residential garage; Sydney Ruiz Krehbiel (front) and Amy Glattly (back) prepping shredded pak choi for the mixer; Amy Glattly (left) and Sarah Salzman (right) using the lifting cart to raise up the mixer to dump kimchi into a tub; Ingredients for vegan kimchi in the mixer in the background and the finished vegan kimchi in the tub in the foreground.

Fermenting With Love in Lawrence

Sarah Salzman was volunteering at a couple of farms around Lawrence several years ago when she noticed something that disturbed her. There often was an excess of produce that went unsold because of small imperfections before rotting or being discarded in the compost.

In 2015, she and a friend made the decision to do something about it and created their own fermenting company to naturally preserve cabbage, beets and a variety of other produce. Wild Alive Ferments was born.

“I started doing (fermenting) classes in East Lawrence,” says Salzman, who also works part-time as an occupational therapist at Stormont Vail Hospital, in Topeka. “And pretty soon, people started approaching us and asking where they could buy our fermented foods. We started small in farmers’ markets.”

She says she started fermenting in the basement of a friend’s house who she considers a mentor. Her first wholesale account was The Merc Co-op. What began as one delivery every couple of months has grown to an order filled every other week.

“I’ve had an interest in gut health and fermented foods,” says Salzman, now Wild Alive’s sole owner/operator. “I got excited about making things myself, while at the same time reducing the carbon footprint. We started with cabbage, chopped it by hand. It’s time-consuming, but we’re having fun.”

From her mentor’s basement, Salzman moved her business to Mellowfields, an organic vegetable farm on the eastern edge of town. She outgrew that space and, in November 2020, started converting the garage of her North Lawrence home into a fermentation facility with two refrigeration units and an array of mixers, dryers and processors capable of shredding 1,000 pounds of cabbage per hour.

“The business has grown a lot during the pandemic,” she says. “People are becoming more foodies during the pandemic. Fermented-food sales are on the rise. Kimchi sales have gone through the roof.”

The ability to more greatly control the temperature in her garage facility has allowed Salzman to become much more consistent with the quality of product. Wild Alive sells sauerkraut, kimchi, miso (a fermented paste made with soybeans, rice or barley and fermented with koji) and hot sauce. She also dehydrates ferments to create seasoning salts.

She says at least 90 percent of the produce she ferments is grown locally.

Much of Wild Alive’s sales are direct to consumer. But Salzman also is part of a Community Supported Agriculture co-op (CSA), Common Harvest, which she sells to from May through October. She says she runs a winter fermentation CSA herself and sells at farmers’ markets and stores in Kansas City, Lawrence and surrounding communities.

All of Wild Alive’s labor is through private contractors. Salzman says she anticipates contracting more help in the future.

“We’re small, but we’re growing every year,” she says. “The goal is to double what we produce every year. Right now, I think we’re on track to do more than that.”

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