First, she couldn’t imagine going vegan. “It felt like a never-ending conflict within myself: I knew I had to change the way I ate to sustain my happiness from good food, and one major way to do so was by reducing my meat intake, but I didn’t like the taste of the vegan meat I knew. I am sure I was not alone in this.” Things started shifting the day she ate Beyond Burger and Impossible Meat. “Then I understood. Those products were so different in taste and texture from the traditional Chinese vegetarian meat I thought was my only alternative! It inspired me to create one hell of a great-tasting plant-based chicken,” Astrid says of her defining moment. 

Seventeen years of experience in entrepreneurship, ranging from creative communication to gastronomy, seemed like a good basis to build on. A proud Indonesian who moved to China 23 years ago, Astrid previously built Good Indonesian Food, served at the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism, and by doing so, brought many people to experience the rich and varied local, authentic culture. She could do something similar in the plant-based protein industry, while being on the journey herself. Haofood, her Shanghai-based vegan chicken company using peanut protein as a base, saw the light of the day in 2020. “An added motivation was my 9 year old daughter going vegetarian overnight. While I was very proud of her, as a mother, I found it stressful because she couldn’t find anything to eat, and I was worried about whether she’d get the right nutrients.