The Story of Pro+: Defying Limits The Right Way
The world isn’t the way it should be.
Tim here. This is a defiant story of Vite Ramen, and of Pro+. But it’s not just a story about me. It’s a story about you. It’s a story about all of us. It’s a story of doing the impossible, a story of hope, and tenacity, and spite in the face of all odds.
This is a glimpse into our story, of the little ramen makers who could. We exist in defiance of conventional knowledge. We exist as a testament to those of us who fight for the vision of a world we believe in. We exist as proof that doing things the right way, the Vite way, is possible.
We craft our noodles ourselves in the USA, the right way, with the belief that leaders should lead from the front, and by example. We believe in people over profit, and embrace the challenging path, free of venture capital investor influence. And we believe that this isn’t just the right way-- This is how to cultivate skills, tenacity, and opportunity that those sitting atop a corporate tower, cluelessly shelling money in hopes of copying you, can’t hope to match.
We never stop improving. We never stop growing.
This is the story of why, right now, Pro+ can only be made by those of us who do things the right way.
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I have scars on my hands, an innumerable set of burns and cuts and calluses formed over the years. Some of them from my days cooking at a Michelin Star restaurant, and the remainder from this near decade of tinkering with machines, adjusting chains and sprockets, and repairing broken parts.
Some nights, eyes bleary and dragging my limbs as if they were suffocated in mud, I’d listlessly turn the wrench, the distinctive ratcheting sound echoing in the empty production room, and wonder when it’d all be worth it. Hours upon hours, stretching into days that never seemed to end, breaking, and repairing, breaking, and repairing, breaking, and repairing.
Each time I pulled myself out of that room, stained with grease and marked with a dozen new wounds, it felt like I’d siphoned the vitality of my own life to feed the insatiable appetite of the machines. But that’s okay. I can heal, and recover with time, and be made stronger, little by little. And if I could, then, so could they as I fed them.
I became intimately familiar with them. Amethyst, we’d affectionately named our noodle machine, its name matching a shipping manifest designation it’d been given on its journey here, and Mike, our dehydrator, for the microwave dehydration system it was powered by. When Amethyst would throw a tantrum, and her frame would shudder and shake from her agitation, I knew when to soothe her and when to let her ride it out. When Mike would tire and slow, or grow incensed and heated, I knew when to let him cool down or when to encourage his more energetic state.
From the rattling of unstable mixes to the humming of motors, from the creaking and straining on a batch of particularly tough dough to the hiccups Amethyst would develop at the unexpected end of a sheet, I’d know what needed to be adjusted, which chain to tighten, which screw came loose, which knob or dial to turn. These weren’t the cold, unfeeling structures of steel and wires that performed exactly as you told them to-- They were living, breathing creatures that changed their mood with the temperature, became better with care and affection, and faltered with neglect and misunderstanding.
How Amethyst struggled against brittled dough on a hot summer afternoon, how Mike would fight to dry noodles under the oppressive humidity of a rainy morning-- These became the things we knew and understood with a familiarity and expertise that can only be learned by personally tending to them.
If I were not the one doing this, then we would not be able to make Pro+, because even by all conventional knowledge, no one believed that Amethyst and Mike would be able to make even our standard Vite Ramen...
Much less a ramen with 35% more protein than our current noodles.
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8 years ago, we were the first ones to make high protein ramen. Conventional wisdom said that it was impossible, and us, so new to the food industry, fresh faced and eager, were told again, and again, and again by the industry experts and consultants we talked to that we should give up. Abandon the dream, or find millions on millions of dollars to hire food scientists that would, slowly, over time, develop it for us.
Protein, after all, was the enemy of factory machinery. Protein made dough tough, causing excess stress on motors. Protein made dough shrink, making it unpredictable and a nightmare for consistency, something that machinery demanded for smooth production. The more protein, the worse it’d get.
If we didn’t have the money, they said, then find investors.
And if we didn’t want investors... give up.
And so we didn’t.
And we decided, that day, to roll up our sleeves and declare:
“Skill Issue.”
Money does not exist in a vacuum. Money exists to create opportunity and enable people. There is a strong reason why some of the most powerful companies in the world, despite spending ludicrous stacks of money that would fuel entire countries, aren’t able to make some of the things that a small company can.
With money, you can buy people’s time; specifically skilled people’s time. But these giant megacorporations buy these skilled people’s time because they, themselves, don’t possess the skill required. With that money, they buy the time, and therefore, the chance of having the people who possess the skill to solve the problem they want to solve.
There’s a saying my mom has always taught me, a phrase that I’ve carried with me all my life.
“If someone else can do it, what stops you from doing it too?”
We’re all human. We’re all different in our own, unique ways, and we can all approach the same problem differently, and solve that problem in a thousand different ways.
And so if someone else can draw, then so can you. Not in the same exact way, but in some new, beautiful form all your own, developed from your own skill and your own time learning. If someone else can write, then so can you, whether it’s a deep, thought-provoking poem or a powerful, rousing novel.
And so, if someone else could potentially gain the skill to create the noodle that was said to be impossible... well, then, why can’t we?
And even beyond that, why limit ourselves to what others can do?
Vite Ramen was made based on that philosophy. Sometimes, I’m a little amused by the concept of Vite Ramen. In this, we were far greedier than even a mega-corporation-- we weren’t content with just high protein, or just high fiber, or just all the nutrients, or just high quality noodles, or just delicious flavors.
We wanted it all. And so, we didn’t rest until it was done.
That was years ago, now.
To be fair, there’s precious few people who care about everything we’ve included with Vite Ramen, and that’s to be expected. It is a lot of stuff. In our surveys, we’re seeing that protein and flavor are the #1 thing that people care about, with people generally ranking the rest of the things we’ve put in Vite Ramen as something they’re not quite as interested in. Sure, it varies from person to person, which is expected, but nothing else really stands out quite above the rest like protein and flavor do.
So, if it was protein and flavor that people wanted, then it’d be protein and flavor that we’d crank up to 11.
But the question lingered-- Was even higher protein than we have now even possible? Sure, we’d proved those who said we couldn’t do it wrong, and the imitators and copycats fueled by venture capital investors were spending millions of dollars to try catching up to us. In some ways, this was also something we would need to do for our survival. Our skill and tenacity had taken us this far, but it was only a matter of time before others caught up. We’re not so arrogant to believe no one else could do what we’ve done-- Rather, we knew that we were simply the first, the ones who proved it possible.
They were nipping at our heels, and always would be. It will always be harder to be the first, to be the ones who innovate and push the limits, than to be the one who copies from an existing sample.
And yet, we have those precious, powerful advantages that couldn’t be matched by money.
Our passion, born through the pursuit of the impossible. Our tenacity, born through weathering the relentless storm of doubt cast by others. And most of all, our skill, honed through unyielding perseverance and developed through the brutal, exhausting trials we’ve overcome.
Pro+ isn’t something that can be made without spending countless hours listening to the machines. It’s not something that can be made without knowing the texture of the noodles beneath your fingers, without knowing the tension of the rollers and the stretch of the dough sheets. Even higher protein means even more stress on the machines, even more fine-tuning, adjustments, failures, and struggles.
And yet, we make it happen anyway. Because we’re not sitting in a corporate boardroom throwing money at problems. We’re in the thick of it, pulling every ounce of strength from our bodies, fighting with every piece of our heart and soul.
Pro+ is more than just the highest protein ramen in the world. It’s a declaration that doing things the right way isn’t just an ideal. Because even if it’s a harder path, a more painful path, the determination, the skill, the tenacity you build from it matters. It gives you advantages, gives you strength and opportunities that can never be done any other way.
Pro+ is our proof of the right way to do things. To never stop improving. To never stop growing.
And we’re just getting started.
March 4th. Pro+ releases. Get ready.
And as always, remember to be kind, and savor life’s little victories.
-Tim, CEO/Founder Vite Kitchens