January 5, 2007

Momofuku Ando dies at the age of 96.

He’s the man who invented instant noodles, an easy meal that sells over 100 billion servings a year.

His creation reached space and was voted the most important Japanese invention of the 20th century, even surpassing Sony’s Walkman.

The truth is, for the first 40 years of his life, Ando struggled to find success, or even balance.

Born on March 5, 1910 in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Ando moved to Japan at the age of 23 and then worked in various occupations.

He had sold clothes, machine parts, prefabricated houses, salt and socks. He had headed a failed credit union and been jailed for tax evasion, claiming his run-ins with the law were the result of his attempt to set up a scholarship program for poor students.

One cold night in 1957, penniless after a failed business venture, he was about to see a scene that would change his life. Walking home after work, he saw a white cloud of steam and a crowd waiting in a line that was 30 meters long. All of them were patiently waiting to buy noodles, which were cooked in boiling water. And then Ando thought: How could he make it easier?

So, he started experimenting in a warehouse he had in the yard of his house. His plan was to make noodles that anyone could prepare by simply adding boiling water.

His undertaking was difficult, and so Ando worked day and night in the yard’s warehouse, for a whole year. She would make large quantities of noodles and use a watering can to soak them in chicken broth before drying them. But it had a hard time removing the moisture while keeping the flavor. His secret was a trick his wife used when frying vegetables. Instantly frying the noodles in palm oil made them “magical”.

So in 1958, his instant noodles hit the market. They looked like yellowish worms wrapped in cellophane and everything seemed doomed to failure. These noodles were six times more expensive than fresh noodles, making his competitors laugh. But within the first year, Ando had sold 13 million bags. His business, Nissin Foods, had taken off and his competitors rushed to enter this new market.

In 1971, he launched instant noodles in plastic cups so that his hungry customers didn’t even need a bowl to enjoy them.
International expansion followed, with the company opening factories in Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Hungary and Germany.

In July 2005, the noodles were placed in an airtight container, from where a Japanese astronaut ate them aboard the space shuttle Discovery. “Man must eat wherever and whenever he is. Even in space,” Ando said.

At the time of his death, his company was making $300 million a year in profits, but its founder continued to eat instant noodles most days. Today, it is estimated that 100 billion packages of instant noodles are consumed worldwide each year.

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