Nut butter brand Yuefeng, committed to making the best nut butter
Text and images provided by Leezen
The aroma of roasted Sichuan pepper fills the space of just over twenty ping. Apart from a stone mill, a spatula, and glass jars, there is no other machinery or equipment. Chen Yutian, in his thirties, is roasting carefully selected natural spices at low temperature. Later, they will be ground and blended into a delicious cold noodle sauce -- all of this work is done entirely by hand. "There are still people like this nowadays! Making such good products!" This was the first impression of the food development staff when they visited "Yuefeng."
Five years ago, someone recommended Boss Chen's shacha sauce to Leezen, but because he was in partnership with others at the time, he could not cooperate with anyone else. It was not until he felt his ideals could not be realized that he decided to run the business solely on his own. So what ideals exactly does he insist on? It is a long story -- let us look at his life review.
In high school, Boss Chen weighed over one hundred kilograms. In the first semester of his senior year, with astonishing willpower, he ran every night and skipped dinner, losing over thirty kilograms in three months. However, most overweight people have an acidic constitution and poor health. After such harmful weight loss, his body became even worse. Just climbing stairs from the first floor to the second floor left him drenched in sweat -- the kind of weak, saltless sweat -- and he suffered severe hair loss. His health deteriorated day by day.
In his freshman year of university, he searched through "Evergreen" and "Health World" magazines in the library, looking for ways to heal and strengthen his body. He unexpectedly discovered the many benefits of a vegetarian diet. Since he already had a favorable impression of vegetarianism, he naturally began eating vegetarian, and combined with exercise and swimming, using himself as a test subject, his health improved. This truly confirmed that a vegetarian diet is beneficial to health. It turned out that choosing the right foods and good-quality foods can indeed keep people away from medicine.
A major turning point in life -- from that moment on, making pure, delicious sauces
After graduating from university, Boss Chen worked at a bank for over a year and found that it did not suit his interests. He questioned whether work was merely a tool for making a living. If life were just to pass like this, it would be utterly meaningless. He hoped that work could be a combination of interest and life meaning, so he resigned from the bank and prepared to study abroad. At this time, he still had doubts in his heart: studying abroad seemed like an escape. Although he had interests, it was not really what he truly wanted to do in his heart -- it was just an excuse to go abroad and temporarily escape the problem of choosing a career.
After passing TOEFL and while preparing to go abroad, a friend wanted to open an organic bakery in Zhongli, and his heart began to waver. Because since his senior year of university, he had been eating wheat germ and soybean lecithin, making his own yogurt, and sprouting black beans. He had developed a great interest in organic foods, believing that natural and organic things were not only good for himself but could also benefit all beings and the earth's environment, and could also form a good connection with the public. With this thought, his path abroad took a turn -- he went to Zhongli to make bread.
While making bread, he discovered that the country truly lacked good sauces. Those jams containing additives numbed his taste buds and made him feel uncomfortable all over. Moreover, the longer he ate vegetarian, the lighter his taste became, and the more he discovered: there were far too few good vegetarian seasoning sauces! Not to mention vegetarian ones -- non-vegetarian ones were even worse, with high levels of chemical food additives filling all kinds of sauces on the market.
In traditional thinking, sauces are considered merely a supporting role in cooking, and the ingredients used in sauces are also very poor, causing great harm to the health of those who consume them. Since childhood, Boss Chen's mother was skilled at blending all kinds of seasonings -- spicy sauce, cold noodle sauce, wasabi sauce, doubanjiang... all highly praised by everyone. Through this influence, he also loved blending sauces. Based on the above, a friend suggested: why not consider opening a food shop specializing in developing natural, pure, nutritious, and delicious sauces? He was tempted by the thought, and Yuefeng was formally established. He hoped that the products he made would not only benefit public health, but also minimize harm to the environment, and that the production process would avoid noise, pollution, or wastewater as much as possible.
Understanding this journey of his heart makes it easy to understand why, when Leezen was evaluating his cold noodle sauce and he could not be certain whether the peanuts were completely free of aflatoxin, he simply switched to higher-cost almonds. The evaluators worried that he would not cover his costs, but what he cared about was the quality he demanded of himself and the health of consumers.
Nut butter born from the boss's ultra-high standards
Leezen noticed that he used mixed nuts to make the sauce and dried kumquat to season it. During processing, kumquats may be mixed with sulfide (a color-retaining and freshness-preserving agent) to maintain a beautiful golden yellow color, so Leezen provided natural plum powder as a substitute seasoning to develop Leezen's exclusive nut butter, and he was happy to cooperate. Because he knew that nuts are very high in protein and fat, and plums happen to cut through greasiness and aid digestion. After trial production, his whole family also felt that the flavor with plum powder added was better than with kumquat, so they decided to add plum powder for seasoning.
However, because plum pits are not easy to crush, after grinding into powder there were still granules, so after making the sauce, granules could still be felt, and this texture was not very pleasant on the palate. Boss Chen also contacted the plum powder supplier about this problem, asking them to improve it, but it could not be solved. Even so, after he knew that adding plum powder gave better flavor, even when the plum powder had problems, he absolutely would not give up easily. To overcome the granule problem, Boss Chen sifted it himself with a sieve. He thought this would solve the granule problem, but unexpectedly, because the sieve holes were too small, less plum flesh got through, while the finer salt all went in. As a result, this batch came out a bit salty, with insufficient plum flavor. By his own quality control standards, it was unqualified, so he did not dare put it formally on the shelves and only asked Leezen to buy it at cost price. Leezen also did not put this batch on the shelves and consumed it internally. But after internal staff ate this product, they all felt it was incomparably good. How could the boss himself call it unqualified? Voices of surprise, heartache, and admiration rose on all sides, and word of the product's reputation spread quickly.
Even now, he still very much loves making sauces, because this is not just work -- it is his aspiration. Whether in research and development, production, or sales, every jar of product represents his heartfelt intention and blessings. Every time a new product is launched, he feels a great sense of achievement and happiness, and every day feels very fulfilling, with his passion and vitality never diminishing in the slightest.
Boss Chen also feels very gratified that he can stay true to his original intention and persist in doing what he believes is meaningful. Looking back on those days when he refused to compromise and struggled with loans and cash flow, he feels even more grateful that Leezen's development staff walked through this path with him. Boss Chen said: "Doing what I love and what benefits others, I can live with a clear conscience; as long as what I do has long-term benefits, then success lies with heaven." When Yuefeng was first established, the obstacles it faced were truly beyond words. The most difficult thing was: how to tell everyone about the product's strengths, and how to get carefully made sauces into the hands of those who love them. He said: "Holding bottle after bottle of sauce, visiting organic stores door to door, many friendly and enthusiastic friends helped us enormously. Leezen's development team helped us with product research and development and spent a great deal of time adjusting the flavors. The completion of everything is the effort of many, many friends. Thank you to these friends -- whether our staff, stores, or users -- this abundance of support has allowed us to keep walking bravely and not alone on this path of clean eating. That this product has the support of so many people is proof of heaven's blessing." This is the conclusion of Boss Chen, around thirty years old, looking back on five years of struggle.