Something Thai Inc.
Iowan Satisfies Taste for Thai
By Mark Kawar
World-Herald staff writer
October 10, 2003
CARROLL, Iowa - Here in the heart of meat-and-potatoes country, it's a pretty safe bet that Lisa Danzer is the only person who makes her living selling fish sauce and lemon grass.
Carroll has no Thai restaurants, no Thai residents and practically no Asian influence at all.
Yet Danzer, a blond Carroll native who tasted her first Thai food less than two years ago, is co-owner of one of the few companies in the country that import Thai food, supplying restaurants, frozen-food makers and consumers with everything from dried shrimp to pickled ginger.
Her company - Something Thai - and another Thai food importer she works for - Temple of Thai - both have their headquarters in this town of 10,000 about 100 miles northeast of Omaha.
"It's a wonderful thing," said Danzer, sipping a bowl of bright-yellow egg drop soup at one of Carroll's two Chinese restaurants, "how you can live anywhere and work over the Internet."
Thanks to the wonders of technology, Danzer can sit in her Carroll home office, surrounded by nothing more Thai than a few catalogs and fruit carving knives, and manage the U.S. side of both companies' operations. Nearly all sales come through the companies' Web sites - www.templeofthai.com and www.somethingthai.com.
Most of the food ends up in California and large East Coast cities with large Thai populations.
Karla Baumhover Pengsagun, Danzer's partner in Something Thai and the owner of Temple of Thai, handles the Thailand side of the businesses from her home on the tropical resort island of Koh Phangan.
Carroll and Koh Phangan are nearly exactly opposite each other on the globe - and that's hardly the biggest difference between the two places.
Carroll's largest industries are telemarketing, ham processing and window manufacturing. The town has 10,000 residents and nearly 50 churches.
Koh Phangan, is an Thai island about 300 miles south of Bangkok. It draws tourists from around the world to its idyllic white sand beaches, lush jungles and year-round sunshine.
For Baumhover Pengsagun, another Carroll native and Danzer's childhood friend, Temple of Thai was the culmination of years of cultural wandering.
Baumhover Pengsagun left Iowa after college to work in finance and later in food wholesaling in New York City.
But the daily grind of New York life wasn't for her, and after quitting her job, she found herself traveling through Thailand, taking in the scenery and the food.
It was on Koh Phangan that she met her future husband, Mayo Pengsagun, when he gave her a ride in his water taxi.
"He turned out to be a very good cook, so I stayed!" she wrote from Thailand in an e-mail interview. His second career was as a cook at a Koh Phangan resort.
After a brief stint as resort entrepreneurs on another Thai island, the couple moved to Carroll, where they founded Temple of Thai in 1999. Baumhover Pengsagun didn't do any market research, but she saw that Americans were getting a taste for foreign foods, and she saw room in the market for more Thai imports to spice up their diets.
Last year, the United States imported about $1.9 billion worth of Thai food, mostly shrimp and other commodities, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Specialty food imports from all countries, among them products such as Temple of Thai's prawn crackers and satay marinade, fetch about $50 billion a year, according to the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade.
John Roberts, the group's president, said the market for such foods has approximately doubled in the past five years because Americans' tastes are increasingly turning toward the exotic.
"It's grown tremendously from when ethnic foods were only sold to Germans at German grocery stores or to Italians at Italian grocery stores," he said.
Temple of Thai and Something Thai receive about 1,800 orders a year. Baumhover Pengsagun would not disclose the companies' revenues.
The couple are back in Thailand now - they never planned to stay long in Carroll - working with food suppliers. But they couldn't have left without someone to handle the U.S. end of their fledgling company.
That's where Danzer came in. She and Baumhover Pengsagun went to high school together in Carroll but lost touch after graduation. While Baumhover Pengsagun went off to the University of Iowa, and then to New York, Danzer stuck around Carroll, briefly living in Omaha before the pull of home brought her back.
When Baumhover Pengsagun returned to Carroll, Danzer was selling her consignment store and needed a job.
That's when Karla and Mayo Pengsagun invited her over to dinner - Danzer's first taste of Thai food.
"He made a whole fish, in the Thai style" - with the head still on, staring back at them, Danzer said. "It might have been the spiciest thing I'd ever eaten."
Her husband, Danzer said, was a bit taken aback by the meal, but she continued eating Thai food and soon was working for Temple of Thai - just in time for the couple to return to Thailand.
In March, the three formed a new company, Something Thai, to sell imported Thai food in bulk to restaurants and food processors.
None of the food from either company actually goes through Carroll - it is shipped from Thailand to a New York warehouse and then on to customers. The companies have three employees, all Thai, in New York.
"We're hoping to open a warehouse here one day," she said.
The partners also plan to expand the business into other areas such as Thai massage oils and fruit carving knives.
Danzer laughs at the possibility of a big building filled with spicy curries and decorated like a Thai temple sitting along Carroll's main street.
"That would shake things up here."