Bringing the heat

Michelle Tew, Founder and CEO at Homiah. — Photos: Homiah

IT was the David-and-Goliath battle that spurred waves of spicy fervour across the Asian-American community in the US.

In April, a saga involving a celebrity chef, a trademark claim and jars of chili sauce became the subject of widespread attention, prompting public outcry and impassioned discussions around cultural identity and ownership.

Swept into the middle of the fiery fiasco was Michelle Tew, a Malaysian-born, small-business owner in New York City who sought to share the flavours of home with a broader audience. Her business, Homiah, was one of the recipients of cease-and-desist letters from Momofuku, the culinary empire established by nationally-known chef David Chang.

The Guardian reported that the letters were sent to businesses that used the terms ‘chili crunch’ and ‘chile crunch’ on their product labels, as Momofuku’s range of retail goods has its own spicy-crunchy chili oil item named ‘Chili Crunch’. At the time, the company had acquired the ‘chile crunch’ trademark rights and intended to trademark ‘chili crunch’ at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Tew, whose business produces South-East Asian cooking spice kits and ‘Sambal Chili Crunch’ condiments, tells us that she was shocked to see the name Momofuku when she opened the legal letter.

“It’s a big name here in New York City, and even in the US,” she says. In the past, she had visited Momofuku restaurants and purchased their ice cream and cakes.

“I’m a tiny business that started in 2022, and I’m the sole full-time employee. I just didn’t really think I was noticeable to anybody,” she says, recalling her initial reaction.

What added to the surprise and disappointment was that the letter came from Momofuku, an Asian-American founded company known for its role in advancing Asian cuisine in the country.

“To see that they were coming down on a small, Asian, woman- owned business in the US was very saddening. It made me wonder, what was the point of all this? Aren’t we all working together for the same goals?”

Homage to home

Tew’s love for cooking was cultivated during her upbringing in Malaysia. Growing up in KL in a Penang Nyonya family, she relished in learning to make authentic Peranakan dishes from her grandmother.

It was during her university days at Columbia University in the US that the seeds which led to Homiah were first planted. While living in the college dorms, she would regularly invite friends over and cook for them, sometimes feeding 20 to 30 people at a time.

“I didn’t know that was quite unusual. This was not something people did in New York City,” she remembers. “So I became known for that. It became part of my identity among friends.”

The supper clubs went on even as she graduated and progressed in her career in consulting and advertising. “Being able to cook my home food for people and express my love for others in that way was very grounding, it made me feel I stayed true to who I was,” she shares.

The pop-ups continued to grow in prominence, and soon she was being invited to street fair events where hundreds sampled her dishes. As more people queried about how they could make the same meal at home, the idea struck her to offer cooking pastes that could be bought at grocery stores, allowing an accessible way for people to recreate dishes like laksa.

After a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign, she set up a facility in Malaysia and launched the company in the US in 2022.

The name Homiah comes from the Hokkien term for ‘good life’, she explains. “Something that I really took for granted in Malaysia was how important food was as a way of bringing the family and friends together, and expressing love for each other,” she says.

“People would say, ‘Oh you’re very Homiah’, to be able to come home to a nice meal and have parents, a spouse, or a grandmother who loves and looks after you.”

Crunch time

Since launching the business, Tew says the reception for Homiah’s products has been very positive and encouraging. In particular, she was pleasantly surprised at how mainstream US grocery buyers expressed interest and wanted to offer their customers more specialised, authentic Asian flavours that went beyond generic ‘pan-Asian’ options.

“In the last several years, awareness of this cuisine has boomed and no other player was offering Nyonya cuisine on their shelves,” she says. In 2023, Homiah was among the handful out of 5,000 applicants selected for the start-up accelerator programme of retail giant Target.

Then came the chili crunch controversy in 2024. After the initial dismay at the cease-and-desist letter, her disappointment hardened into firm resolve. She searched online for other companies that also featured ‘chili crunch’ names on products and reached out.

From those that responded, she learned many who had received similar letters were already planning to apologise to Momofuku and change their names. “Most of these businesses didn’t have the wherewithal to look up the public USPTO database. They just assumed Momofuku was right.”

Many of the business owners were unaware that Momofuku did not yet own the ‘chili crunch’ trademark. In fact, Tew says that the company had not even officially posted the trademark application at the USPTO when she received the letter.

“I started to feel I had a duty and owed it to the community not to just roll over,” she states. “With many small mom-and-pop businesses, it is a winning strategy for Momofuku for anti-competitiveness and monopolisation.”

A chili reception

News about the chili crunch debacle got around, provoking the ire of consumers and entrepreneurs far and wide, particularly from the Asian American community. The backlash was enough for David Chang to address the issue on his podcast, offering up an apology, explanation and announcement that his company will not be enforcing the trademark moving forward.

Tew’s opinion of this development is that while the move is a step in the right direction for Momofuku, it does not go far enough. To her, the company’s actions — moving ahead with the application for the ‘chili crunch’ trademark — seem to be in stark opposition with its words.

“It begs the question, why are you still processing the application?,” she notes. Momofuku’s CEO Marguerite Mariscal indicated on the podcast that the company was trying to navigate handling the trademark so that the ‘chili crunch’ term does not potentially get claimed by another company.

“If they don’t want anyone else to get the mark, I think the correct strategy is to oppose the existence and validity of the trademark in the first place,” Tew opines. Instead, she says, they could take up the stance that these terms are generic and non-trademarkable, and oppose others who may attempt to claim it.

“We in the community continue to hope that they will withdraw their application for the ‘chili crunch’ mark,” she concludes.

At the moment, though, Tew has her hands full with Homiah’s rapid expansion. This year, it will be launched in several grocery stores, including notable supermarket chains Meijer and Whole Foods Market. “I’m just really excited to see our products make a difference by introducing speciality Asian cuisine,” she shares.

“As somebody who started this company from a Kickstarter, and is the sole full time employee; who was just pursuing what I was taught as a child by my grandmother, this is really beyond what I could have dreamed.”

This article first appeared in Star Biz7 weekly edition.