Maebo Noodle Factory was started in 1950 when grandmother Koto Maebo began experimenting making her own noodles from scratch in her husband's tofu-making facilities. Her husband Toshito was a peddler who sold vegetables, tofu and other food products. He also was a distributor for a small, hand cranked machine that cut dough into noodles. Grandma Koto used one of those machines to make her own noodles, mixing the dough by hand. "She used to experiment with all kinds of stuff," Aketo says.
The family garage was converted into a little noodle-making factory for the enterprising Koto, and soon she had her two sons and six daughters helping out. Koto made fresh saimin, chow fun, and udon noodles, mixing each batch by hand, pushing them through the overtaxed machine with a bamboo stick. They also used the dough to make won ton pi, the small squares of dough used in making Chinese won ton. While Koto and the kids made their products, Toshito served as president and salesperson of the small family-run operation,drumming up business and buyers.
Then one day, three years after she perfected her noodle-making, Koto succeeded in using the same dough mix that she used for the won ton pi to make a new kind of chip. Using a bit of sugar, the little pieces of won ton pi were deep fried to make a sweet, crunchy snack, a kind of chip, so to speak
