Red Chopsticks blows away the 'Mama index' with quality ingredients and nutritional supplements

NOT YOUR AVERAGE CUP OF NOODLES

Red Chopsticks blows away the 'Mama index' with quality ingredients and nutritional supplements

Story by CHIRATAS NIVATPUMIN

Economic policymakers have been harping for years about the need for Thai businesses to move up the value chain, establish their own brands and upgrade their product quality and packaging. Sanguan Chanyaputhipong of Mawai Food Corp has taken those words to heart. Earlier this month, the 30-year-old biology graduate and his young colleagues launched his new Red Chopsticks brand as the latest entrant in the highly competitive instant noodle market.

Red Chopsticks isn't your ordinary bowl of noodles. Priced at 49 baht per pack, or two to four times that of leading brands, Red Chopsticks is aimed at the super-premium end of the market and is available only at Tops and Central Food Hall outlets.

''We're a premium noodle, a functional noodle,'' Mr Sanguan said.

For starters, Red Chopsticks is made with high protein wheat flour and is the only product in the market produced with rice bran oil rather than palm oil.

''We have 60% less saturated fat than our competitors and use no salt or MSG in production,'' Mr Sanguan said. ''It's the healthiest instant noodle available in the world.''

Red Chopsticks is available in four flavours, each positioned with a different ''function''.

The best-selling Beauty Bowl is a chicken-flavoured noodle offering 1,050 milligrammes of marine collagen from fish skin, while the tom yam kung-flavoured Power Bowl boasts 190 mg of l-carnitine, a compound often sold as a nutritional supplement. The seaweed-flavoured Green Bowl offers 1,200 mg of dietary fibre, and the seafood-flavoured Kids Bowl boasts at least 200 mg of Omega 3 and DHA fatty acids.

Mr Sanguan said the flavours were based on the natural flavours of each key supplement.

The nutrients were not infused into the noodle during the production process, but rather added to the flavour sachet, he said, to avoid the problems of heat damage to the nutrients during the production or cooking process.

''It's the best form of delivery from a scientific perspective,'' Mr Sanguan said. ''The flavours and function are tied together. L-carnitine, for instance, is naturally sour, so we use it with our tom yam kung product. The Kids Bowl uses fish oils, so seafood was a natural fit.''

Mr Sanguan said the company spent over one year and invested over 100 million baht in developing products with the aim of offering the best noodle available on the market.

The packaging uses environmentally friendly, food-grade plastic that can be reused, microwaved and frozen with no effect on the food. The bowl was designed with ridges along the bottom to allow holding without burning of the hand, while the noodles are wrapped in air-tight plastic to maximise freshness and conform to the bowl shape to reduce breakage.

Mr Sanguan acknowledged that the firm was a decided underdog in the market, but insisted that a market niche was available.

''In the instant noodle market, everyone thinks five baht per pack. No one thinks of the end-user, but rather only on what's easy to make and what's cheapest. No one wants to go out of the box,'' he said.

''We're small and able to move quickly. Our name comes from ma wai [to move quickly].''Red Chopsticks eventually hopes to enter the export market, particularly Western countries such as the US and England to take advantage of the growing demand for healthy foods.

''Consumers want an authentic product, a healthy product, a unique product. Our target are consumers who are health conscious, who are already paying for organic foods and supplements and are controlling their diet.''