About Us

  • We established our family business in Portland, Oregon in 2023 to share our family's one-of-a-kind vegetable snacks with food lovers throughout North America. We are proudly woman- and AAPI/POC-owned.

  • We lovingly handcraft our snacks in small batches at our Kobe workshop using wholesome vegetables and simple, all-natural ingredients from Japanese farmers and producers we know and trust.

  • We're proud to keep our business human-scale, which allows us to care for our small team like family and ensure the highest quality of our artisanal snacks. We will never mass-produce our outsource.

We appreciate your interest in our company and products and look forward to your continued patronage for generations to come!

With our very best wishes,
The Yokono Family

Our History

In 1983 our father (and father-in-law) Hironobu Yokono founded our Japanese family business in Kobe, Japan.

 

“I want to offer natural, handmade snacks people can trust because they can see the faces of those who provided the ingredients and those who made them.”

— Hironobu Yokono

Our dad's wish was to handcraft delicious snacks using wholesome ingredients from farmers and producers he knew and trusted.

 

His first creation was a modern take on the classic Japanese treat known as imo karinto. He gathered sweet potatoes from local farmers, sliced them carefully, added a touch of unrefined brown sugar, and gently cooked them by hand in rice bran oil, creating our very first Kobe Sweet Potato Chips!

Over time, our family introduced snacks featuring additional unique sweet potato varieties, as well as our vegetable chips featuring potato, kabocha, carrot, lotus root, okra, and more. Our products were soon enjoyed by customers across Japan.

 

Recognizing the accomplishments and special potential of our business, the Japanese government awarded us an innovation grant which enabled us to integrate unique low-temperature-vacuum methods into our cooking processes, further maximizing the quality and nutritional value of our snacks.

In 2023 we were honored to win the Grand Prix culinary award in the prestigious Japan Food Selection. Our artisanal vegetable snacks were judged to be of the very highest taste and quality by a team of 23,000 food experts from across Japan.

In 2023 we also established our US business in Portland, Oregon to share our family's one-of-a-kind vegetable snacks with food lovers throughout North America.

Benefit Company

Our US business is an Oregon benefit company. In addition to earning a profit, our purpose is to create a material positive impact on society and the environment through our decision making and operations. We assess our social and environmental performance according to the B Lab standard. You can view our annual benefit report on our Benefit Company page.