Our brand story
Discover who we are and how we came to be.
The Prequel: When Loves Align
Born in Hong Kong to parents who were entrepreneurs, David naturally became interested in commerce from an early age. He moved to San Francisco at age 14 and began working in Chinese restaurants as a waiter and a cook while attending Galileo High School.
David majored in Electrical Engineering and worked in the aerospace industry before becoming the Operations Manager at the Stanford Linear Accelerator for over 20 years. Despite this, he always dreamed of owning a business. Chinese food was an emerging trend at that time, and there weren’t many USA made, authentic Asian food products, so he determined that this was the perfect opportunity for him to fulfill.
He decided to enter the food industry, studied business at Stanford, focused on sauces based on published data, and tested products with his friends’ support. He realized he could make a career out of this, especially since he loved cooking and feeding people.
Enter from stage right: David’s wife, Cheryl Tsang. With her background in engineering and graphic communications, Cheryl and David shared common interests in creative and entrepreneurial ambitions. Her appreciation for food also played a significant role in their future projects.
“I used to smash atoms, and now I smash garlic.”
– David Tsang
Starport Foods’ Origin Story
When David’s nephew was in college studying business, he had an assignment to create a company—asking for Uncle David’s help, they created Tsang and Ma, a kitchen supply company, selling Oriental vegetable seeds, carbon steel woks, cleavers, and chopping blocks.
After extensive research in regional world flavors and getting well connected in the retail food industry, David and Cheryl launched the House of Tsang, starting with dry seasoning blends, flavored oils and stir-fry sauces
As House of Tsang gained popularity in the US and internationally, Kraft Foods bought the brand and retained David to manage it. During his time with Kraft, David wrote a cookbook, “All that Sizzles.” The Tsang’s later repurchased their company and founded Oriental Deli for foodservice—and gaining even more notice: eventually both House of Tsang and Oriental Deli were bought by Hormel Foods.
During David’s time at Hormel, any outside Asian food projects had to be put on hold per his non-compete agreement—so he and Cheryl began expanding their scopes to explore other world flavors. This gave birth to two new businesses: Le Krewe Restaurant and Oyster Bar (a Cajun and fusion restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District) and Starport Foods (a line of flavor-infused oils and seasoning pastes/rubs). Once his contract with time at Homel ended was up, David and Cheryl were able to focus on growing Starport’s sauce line, including adding Asian flavor profiles to its repertoire.
“Creating a sauce is like writing a novel: a story revolves around a main character—a good sauce has a leading flavor that everything else supports.”
– David Tsang
Thickening the Plot (and the Sauces)
David and Cheryl founded Starport Foods in 1994 to simplify cooking for chefs, allowing them to create authentic regional cuisine consistently. The name “Starport” combines “Star” (looking beyond to the future) and “Port” (travel, trade, connection, and new cuisines). Their ready-to-use sauces save time, ingredients, labor, and money—making ethnic cooking easy, accessible, and adventurous.
So, what’s the recipe for Starport’s success? We’ve boiled it down to three main ingredients:
Thickness: When David and Cheryl set out to make Starport great, they asked themselves, “What can we do better than what’s already out there?” At the time, the few existing sauces in the marketplace were thin and overly salty. Starport introduced a pre-thickened sauce that was complete and required no additional ingredients. This offered several benefits including being ready-to-use right from the jug—used hot or at room temperature, as a stir-fry sauce, dipping sauce, drizzle sauce, glaze, or sushi sauce—saving chefs the extra step of adding cornstarch or reducing the sauce to achieve the desired thickness.
Taste: The familiarity of everyone’s favorite Chinese restaurant meals became Starport’s flavor foundation to appeal to the American taste palate. They began adding more unique and authentic flavors and ingredients into their formulas and they were a hit at food industry trade shows and in focus groups—they were flavor trend setters! David likens the process of flavor creation to writing a novel: just as every story is driven by a main character with supporting actors and settings, a sauce has a hero flavor that all other ingredients and flavors support.
Talent: The final secret ingredient is something few can achieve, and that is the precise balance of scientific expertise, creative entrepreneurship, and an astute sense of taste—qualities David and Cheryl both possess (dream team!)—and even a dash beyond that: together, they passionately develop and create delicious and versatile flavors that everyone loves. It is truly a science as they meticulously structure sauces to perfection. Some formulas take months or years to finalize. They also cook with each variation of sauces, so they can see which version reacts favorably to each cooking application. David and Cheryl are also well-traveled and are deeply immersed in learning about foods from different cultures; they truly have unique palates, built for unifying the world through food.
Present and Future
Welcome to Starport Foods, where innovation meets quality in every batch we produce. In this behind-the-scenes tour, you’ll see how our state-of-the-art facility crafts premium sauces and seasonings with precision and care. From sourcing the finest ingredients to our meticulous production process, we take pride in delivering bold, authentic flavors and ensuring flavor consistency to kitchens worldwide.
Our Legacy Brands
Learn more about the history of our work and the brands we’ve lovingly crafted, new and old.
House of Tsang
Oriental Deli
Oriental Deli® was created to offer an Asian turn-key program, providing supermarket operators with the operational tools needed to run a profitable Asian take-out deli. The Oriental Deli program featured kitchen design, wok range installation and implementation, menu and recipe development, software for recipe development, profit and loss calculation, and cook training. Oriental Deli was sold to Hormel Foods in 1992.
Global Select Foods
Le Krewe
Starport Foods is a Certified Minority Business Enterprise with the Southern California Minority Supplier Development Council.