Have you ever been to a Japanese restaurant where they have very realistic plastic food in the window? It is clear that there are people in Japan who are masters at making fake food! As a matter of fact, as described in this article, “Shokuhin Sampuru” (literally “food product sample”) is big business in Japan. What does that have to do with Yumbini? Well….

When we do product tastings, many people want to know how much one bag of Yumbini makes. So, we cooked up a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap to demonstrate. Between tastings, we stored the bowl of cooked Yumbini in the freezer. But after being frozen and thawed a few times, the Yumbini was not very appetizing! So we would have to cook up another package, and another, and another… (kind of wasteful!)

We kept thinking, too bad we don’t have a plastic version! Fortunately, our head of sales (and my husband), Aki, is originally from Japan. He researched and discovered that it is not only possible to get all sorts of plastic food in Japan, but they can custom make anything you want! He sent them pictures of Yumbini, and then personally delivered an actual sample to cook up.

When we were in Japan last month, we were able to pick up our very own Faux-bini! It is in the bowl on the left in the picture above. Everyone agrees it looks pretty darn close to the real thing. Much better than the old frozen sample we used to use. In fact, we have had a few customers try to stick a spoon into it!

In this article, Seigo Kozakai, CEO of a “Shokuhin Sanpuru” company, says he believes sampuru “bring joy to people around the world”. Our new Faux-bini certainly brings joy to us! It saves us having to make new samples all the time. And it helps customers understand what a nice generous portion of Yumbini they will be getting. We hope it brings joy to you too!