The answer came from an unlikely place. A Mitsubishi‑sponsored MBA student took an internship at Yami, an up‑and‑coming U.S. e‑commerce platform selling Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian products to Asian Americans and the broader Asian diaspora. 

That assignment laid the groundwork for a strategic partnership that gives Mitsubishi Shokuhin a direct line to millions of American shoppers. Mitsubishi Shokuhin, which generated about 2.1 trillion yen ($14 billion) of revenue in its last fiscal year, is signing a strategic partnership with Yami that will put more of its portfolio of Japanese food and beverage brands on the platform for U.S. consumers.

“It was pretty random,” recalls Alex Zhou, Yami’s founder. “We weren’t actively raising money. We had already broken even, we had positive cash flow.” Yet over a series of meetings, Zhou says, it became clear that the Japanese trading house could offer something other than capital. “Japanese products and brands already represent more than 30% of what we sell. A name like Mitsubishi can really help with our Japanese supply chains,” he says. 

“Yami gives brand owners instant access to consumers directly, and that is one of the attractive aspects of the platform,” says Kazuo Ito, a senior vice president at Mitsubishi Corporation who heads its food distribution and logistics division and is set to become president and CEO of Mitsubishi Shokuhin in April. The partnership, he says, allows Japanese manufacturers to bypass the slow grind of securing shelf space with U.S. retail buyers and instead reach millions of shoppers online.

Mitsubishi Shokuhin dates to 2011, when four long‑standing food wholesalers, some with histories stretching back more than a century, joined together in one company. The company now supplies a broad range of processed, frozen and chilled foods, alcoholic beverages and confectionery to around 3,000 retailers in Japan, including Japanese convenience‑store chain Lawson and lifestyle retailer Muji.

Mitsubishi Corporation—Japan’s largest trading house, with roughly $122 billion in annual revenue—took Mitsubishi Shokuhin fully private last year via a 137.6 billion yen (about $950 million) tender offer. Ito says part of the rationale was to accelerate overseas expansion by more tightly integrating Shokuhin into the wider Mitsubishi group, including sharing logistics networks and talent.

What is pushing a traditionally domestic wholesaler to look abroad? One factor is Japan’s tourism boom. The country welcomed a record 42.7 million foreign visitors in 2025, who spent 9.5 trillion yen (about $60 billion), according to government data.

“Many visitors come to Japan, have a good time and buy things for souvenirs or consumption,” Ito says. “But when they go home, they say, ‘I enjoyed that, but where do I get hold of it? Do I have to go back to Japan again?”

Japan’s exports of agricultural, forestry and fishery products and foodstuffs reached a record 1.7 trillion yen in 2025, with record high exports of beef and rice, and a doubling of green tea exports.

Ito argues platforms like Yami can turn those souvenir purchases into ongoing demand. “Companies like Yami can provide that ‘re‑experience’ of going to Japan by providing the products people enjoyed during their stay,” he says.

From Kansas to 4 million customers

Zhou’s own journey underscores the gap Yami is trying to fill. He arrived in the U.S. from mainland China in 2007 as an international student and landed in Kansas, with the nearest Asian grocery store being two hours drive away.

After graduating and moving to the Los Angeles area, he launched Yami in 2013. Within three years, the business had nearly $100 million in revenue without outside funding, he says. Yami has since raised institutional capital, including a $50 million Series B round co‑led by Altos Ventures and Balsam Bay Partners.

The company positions itself as a one‑stop online marketplace for Asian products in North America, spanning snacks, beauty and health items, household goods and more. Zhou says the platform has close to four million registered customers. 

Other ecommerce platforms have arisen to sell Asian goods, including Weee, founded in 2015 by Larry Lu. Asian supermarkets, like the Hanahreum Group’s H Mart, are also booming across the U.S.

Yami’s growth hasn’t been painless. Around 2018, Yami went through a period of cost-cutting. “I learned that you have to separate yourself from the business,” Zhou says. “You have to make decisions based on what’s best for the company. It’s really hard to fire people.”

More recently, higher U.S. tariffs on Asian goods—at times hitting triple‑digit levels on imports from China—have tested Yami’s supply chain and pricing, but Zhou sees the disruption as an opportunity. “We knew Asian supply chains better than others. That created an opportunity to thrive driving this crisis.”

Yami was initially built to serve Asian Americans and the Asian diaspora. “As an Asian and Chinese person, I first felt obligated to make overseas life better for immigrants like myself.” 

Yet non‑Asian shoppers are increasingly buying not just Japanese and Korean snacks, but also Asian beauty products, health supplements, home goods and apparel. They’re also consuming Asian cultural products, like K‑pop and Japanese manga.

“The fastest-growing segment of Yami’s customer base is not Asian, but non-Asian,” Ito, from Mitsubishi Shokuhin, notes. “That is attractive for brand owners like us who want to go to the U.S.”