Courtesy of Tofurky

Once upon a time in Oregon, Seth Tibbott’s mom was concerned about her son’s new vegetarian diet.

He’d gone off to college, and soon after, he’d become a vegetarian. She was worried. Where would he get his protein, if not from meat?

To ease his mother’s mind, Tibbott tinkered with types of proteins, experimenting with ways to cook soy and other alternatives.

One day, he stumbled across a concoction that combined tempeh and tofu in a way that tasted kind of like turkey. He started selling this concoction to his vegetarian friends, then to other vegetarians. In 1980, Tibbott founded Turtle Island Foods, named for a Native American and First Islands origin myth.

Tibbott invested $2,500 of his savings into Turtle Island Foods and rented three fir trees from friends in Hood River, Oregon. Between those striking firs, he built a tall, narrow treehouse that would become his home for eight years as he built his venture into what would eventually become Tofurky.

Courtesy of Tofurky

A holiday roast for vegans

Tibbott’s stepson and current Tofurky CEO Jaime Athos told Business Insider he still recalls meeting Tibbott for the first time. Tibbott was living in the treehouse, cooking up various vegan protein ideas, none of which really took off until 1995.

It was then that Tibbott had the idea that would transform his business — and the future.

„He and some of his culinary friends identified a problem: the vegan problem. What do you do at a high-stakes holiday meal like Thanksgiving if you’ve got vegans coming over?“ Athos said.

At the time, Athos said, the idea of a „vegan“ diet was poorly understood, and the word wasn’t even well-known. Therefore, many vegans found themselves limited to sides at family holidays.

„It was a very niche problem but it was a problem, nonetheless,“ said Athos.

The challenge for Tibbott was making sure that vegans were not left out at Thanksgiving. His first invention was a vegan holiday kit that contained a seasoned tofu roast and vegan sides.

Tibbott’s Thanksgiving kit was first sold by PCC Community Markets, a local Pacific Northwest grocery chain, in 1995. Priced at $30, all 800 units sold out. For Tibbott, this was proof that his concept was viable. Vegans wrote to Tibbott, thanking him for inventing a product that allowed them to no longer feel like second-class citizens at Thanksgiving.

Courtesy of Tofurky

„Thanksgiving is a moment where you go home and you have all kinds of comfort foods,“ Jan Dutkiewicz, a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University researching the political economy of producing plant-based meat alternatives, told Business Insider. „Previously, if you were a vegan or vegetarian, then you were sort of nipping at the sides or being mocked. But this was the first time you could say, ‚Look, I have my own center piece.'“

Dutkiewicz noted that consumers make choices based on taste, habit, and price, and that Tofurky was an early plant-based protein company successfully challenging meat products on those vital fronts.

„I think Tofurky was, in a sense, path-breaking,“ Dutkiewicz said. „It was the first time that a company was saying, „We’re going to take plant-based ingredients and we’re going to actually try to make a meat facsimile that comes as close as we can to challenging a meat product on every criterion that people buy meat on.“

Taking plant-based proteins mainstream

Old Tofurky Boxes Courtesy of Tofurky

After a successful first round of Tofurky sales, Tibbott continued to grow the business, adding deli slices, sausages, and other products to its menu. In 2014, Athos took over as CEO.

Now, the treehouse is falling apart, but Tofurky is still going strong — even as other plant-based „meat“ companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have taken center stage. In fact, Athos doesn’t see them as competition. Instead, he sees them as sharing a common vision.

„I think they helped us achieve this tipping point because now plant-based is the hottest thing in the grocery world. If not for them, this phenomenon wouldn’t have happened as quickly,“ Athos said.

Athos said that Tofurky has benefitted from the increased buzz around the plant-based space that has been generated by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.

„We see them as helping us to fulfill our mission, and honestly what they’ve done is brought a huge amount of attention to the space. We haven’t been able to keep up with the demand for our product. Some of that is because they’re making plant-based products more part of the mainstream conversation. So it’s all been good for us from our perspective.“