Bringing Myanmar cultural delicacies to the world from Canada—Moe Myanmar Foods

Do you have childhood memories of eating a favorite food? Maybe you remember eagerly anticipating each holiday meal at your grandmother’s place? Or how one of your parents’ made the weekend extra special by serving their famous chocolate chip cookies? If you stop and think about it, you most likely associate some of your favorite foods with family memories.

Food is essential for nutrition, but it is also meaningful to humans in many other ways. Think about it—we are the only mammals to cook our food before eating. This makes our consumption of nutrients much different. On an individual level, we grow up eating food of our cultures. It becomes a part of who we are. Many of us associate food from our childhood with warm feelings and good memories, and it ties us to our families, holding a unique and personal value for us. Food from our family often becomes the comfort food we seek as adults in times of stress and frustration.

Culturally speaking, food is paramount. Food can be nostalgic and provide meaningful connections to our family, nation, religion, or communities. Immigrants bring the food of their countries with them wherever they go, and cooking traditional food is a way of preserving their culture when they move to new places. Food can also be a bridge that helps immigrants find their place in a new society.

Continuing to make food from their culture for family meals is a symbol of pride for immigrants and a means of coping with homesickness. Many open their own restaurants and serve traditional dishes. For example, some ingredients needed to make traditional dishes may not be readily available, so the taste and flavor can be different from the taste and flavor of the dishes that they would prepare in their home countries. However, Moe Myanmar Foods provides customers with rich, hearty dishes to experience the food culture of Myanmar. Moe Myanmar Foods provides authentic Myanmar foods made in Canada with a vision to bring Myanmar cultural delicacies to the world. Moe Myanmar Foods is the first commercial producer of delicious and authentic Myanmar foods in North America.

The story behind Moe Myanmar Foods’ inception and its vision

The founder of Moe Myanmar Foods, Aye Maye, found it challenging to find Myanmar cultural delicacies when she and her family moved to Canada. She realized that most people do not know much about Myanmar. Therefore, Aye Maye created Moe Myanmar Foods food processing company with the primary purpose of creating “Made in Canada” authentic Myanmar food products readily available on retail and online shelves in North America and the rest of the world.

According to the company, its primary purpose is “To bring Myanmar cultural delicacies to the world.”

The core values of Moe Myanmar Foods are:

• Authenticity - Their products are authentic and delicious.
• Quality - They always produce the best quality for customers.
• Simplicity - their products are easy to prepare and ready to eat.
• Sustainability - they strive for sustainability and circularity.

Currently, Moe Myanmar has nine products in the market: MohHingar, MohHingar Spice Mix, Chicken Coconut Noodles, Crispy Chickpea Tempura, Sprouted Yellow Peas, Instant Chickpea Tofu Mix, Crispy Peas and Beans, Mandalay Mont-Ti and Mandalay Mee-Shay.

Through the production and sale of Myanmar delicacies, the company also wants to create an environment where poor producers in Myanmar and wealthy consumers worldwide are connected through love, compassion, sharing, and caring. Moe Myanmar intends to develop a cooperative environment through fairtrades for organic products from small, disadvantaged producers in Myanmar. However, the company will not start this project until the federal democracy returns in Myanmar and its current military dictators vanish entirely from the country.

Challenges by Moe Myanmar to sell authentic Myanmar delicacies

Moe Myanmar Foods’ current challenges in todays’ food production/processing space include assessing supply risk factors promptly. Supply distortion is a real challenge when there is a sudden change in demand. The firm is tackling these challenges using multiple domestic and international supply sources.

For low shelf-life products, the firm manages and prefers regular contracts with frequent and low volume productions to tackle and mitigate the challenges faced with a shortened shelf-life.Technology is tremendously helping Moe Myanmar Foods to reduce operating losses and maintain healthy revenue. The firm is working to incorporate smart and intelligent supply management strategies and set it up as soon as the business takes off.

The growth Moe Myanmar food so far and future ambitions

The company finds its market reception so far as satisfactory. With the pandemic is winding down and the markets and travels opening, Moe Myanmar Foods is gearing up and increasing product education and brand awareness through online and in-person campaigns, participating in trade missions, and trade shows.

According to the founder, Aye Maye, a partnership is a central backbone of business growth. Without partnerships, there is no business growth. Moe Myanmar Foods started their business with partnerships in most of their services need—from accounting, legal, production, warehousing, and transportation to sales. The firm is always looking for long-term, positive partnerships, especially in financing, supply, production, marketing, and sales.

The company’s ambition to go global is immense. Since Canada is a beautiful multicultural country with all global immigrants, the company feels expansion in Canada ascertains a strong potential for international markets. Hence, serving as a platform to leap onto the global stage with a strong base.

Creating a business to feed Myanmar delicacies to the world

Aye Maye is the founder of Moe Myanmar Food, producing authentic tasting foods from the Golden Land of Myanmar. Since she moved to Canada, she could not find Myanmar foods in nearby grocery stores. Therefore, she decided to introduce the food culture of Myanmar to North America.

In 2019, she created “Moe Myanmar Foods” in Canada, replicating the authentic taste of the most popular everyday Burmese cuisines. Moe Myanmar Foods is the first producer in North America to make ready-to-eat Myanmar food products available in grocery stores in Canada and the USA.

Aye Maye holds an M.Sc. in Food Marketing from Kyushu University and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Alberta

“To Bring Myanmar Cultural Delicacies to the World!”