It truly is an All-American story.
Mayasari Effendi, who was born in Indonesia, immigrated to the U.S. in 2003 to attend Purdue University. Less than a decade later, she and her husband Richard Mays opened a restaurant in Greensburg, Indiana called Mayasari Indonesian Grill. Thanks to a collaboration with Indiana soybean producers, she has recently expanded her business operation by opening Mayasari Tempeh, a production facility that makes a traditional Indonesian food product called Tempeh from local soybeans.
Her rise as an Indiana business leader started thanks to a young man who lived nearby and had the resources she needed from his family’s farm.
“When Mayasari first came to town, her daughter and I went to school together. One day she asked me about soybeans,” says Nick Stewart, talking about his collaboration with Mayasari. Stewart is a Decatur County farmer and owner-partner of S&G Seeds.
When she first moved to Greensburg and opened her restaurant, she sought out Stewart to help bring her soybeans for Tempeh, which is a fermented soybean product which is very popular in Indonesia and has gained popularity worldwide for its nutritional benefits and versatility in cooking.
“She calls me up and says, ‘Hey, I want to start making tempeh here, so I need soybeans!’ I said, ‘Okay, what kind of soybeans do you need?’ She goes, ‘I don’t know, I just need soybeans.’ So, from there, it just kind of kept expanding,” he says.
At first, Stewart says he would bring Mayasari a five-gallon bucket filled with soybeans harvested from his family’s farm. She started using those soybeans to manufacture tempeh chips, which she now packages under the brand name Maya Soya, which are being sold at Fresh Thyme stores across Indiana and the Midwest.
However, Mayasari’s passion for growing her business didn’t stop there.
“The next thing I know, she’s buying a bean splitter, and we have that installed at our plant. Then she goes, ‘I think I need a special type of soybean here. I’m looking for someone with high protein that’s non-GMO with a clear hilum.’ I said, ‘That is some that we can find,” says Stewart, whose family has long been a seed supplier serving Decatur County and southeastern Indiana through Stewart Seeds, Inc.
Now, with the help of Stewart and other local farmers, they’re providing Mayasari with soybeans to mass-produce tempeh and tempeh chips to ship back to Indonesia and around the world.
Thanks to a revolving loan from the local Economic Development Corporation in Greensburg and Decatur County, Maya was able to purchase a new Tempeh Chip Processor that sharply increases their output from 200 bags a week to an 5,500. During a ribbon cutting event to commemorate the recent expansion, Mayasari says she is donating five cents from every bag of Maya Soya tempeh chips sold to support children’s education in Indonesia.
Stewart says the collaboration is a win-win for both her company and local soybean growers.
“The end goal for us is to leave my family’s farm to my kids that they can farm,” he says. “Realistically, that comes down to developing local markets for our product. If all of a sudden, we start losing out on trade [to competitors in South America], we’re losing money. So, we have to figure out additional ways to backfill those dollars here locally, and this is a huge step forward in doing that.”
The collaboration between Nick Stewart and Mayasari Effendi inspired her husband, Richard Mays, to write a book entitled, Nick and Mayasari Make Tempeh, which is available at Amazon.com.
In February, the Indiana Soybean Alliance (ISA) led a 10-person delegation to the capital city of Jakarta and other points in Indonesia to increase Indiana’s share of that export to their country. Not only were Nick Stewart and Mayasari Effendi on that trip, the delegation included Shelby County farmer and United Soybean Board (USB) director Jim Douglas, Greensburg mayor Josh Marsh, and the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) International Trade Director Andrew Sherman.
Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populous country with more than 280 million people. Even though the soybean industry is vital to Indonesia, the country’s climate is not friendly for growing or storing an adequate supply, which makes that market very attractive to Indiana soybean producers.
Mayasari Tempeh, which produces Indonesia’s traditional food item in the heart of Indiana, will certainly go a long way in growing that relationship between Indiana and our neighbors in Indonesia nearly 10,000 miles away.
CLICK HERE for more information about Mayasari Tempeh.
