Miyoko Schinner facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Miyoko Schinner
Schinner delivering keynote address at Animal Equality Gala 2017
Born	Miyoko Nishimoto 1957 Japan
Occupation	Vegan chef activist cookbook author cooking show host entrepreneur
Alma mater	St. John's College (BA)
Subject	Veganism cookbooks
Notable works	The New Now and Zen Epicure: Gourmet Cuisine for the Enlightened Palate (2001) Artisan Vegan Cheese (2012) The Homemade Vegan Pantry: The Art of Making Your Own Staples (2015) The Vegan Meat Cookbook: Meatless Favorites. Made with Plants (2021)

Miyoko Schinner (née Nishimoto; born 1957) is an American-Japanese vegan chef, cookbook author, activist, cooking show host and social entrepreneur. Since 2024, she has been a Faculty Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Early life and education

Schinner was born Takano Miyoko in a village outside Yokohama, Japan. At age seven, she moved with her mother to the United States. She graduated from St. John's College in Maryland.

Early career

Madam Miyoko (1980s)

During the 1980s, Schinner returned to Japan and settled in Tokyo. During this period she transitioned to a vegan diet for "health reasons" (she realized that she was lactose intolerant). As she began to explore how to create vegan dishes for herself, she decided to sell her creations. She started a small business called "Madam Miyoko" and sold vegan poundcakes (made of Okara), out of her backpack. However, she missed cheese, describing the 80s as the "dark ages of vegan cheese" still dominated by "hippies and macrobiotic food." She briefly visited the United States during this time to attend the Natural Products Expo, where she tasted "Vegan Rella," the only vegan cheese product available at the time. However, she found it disappointing and began to dream of alternatives.

Now and Zen (1988-2003)

Restaurant

Schinner eventually returned to the United States and settled in San Francisco, where in 1988 she opened a vegan bakery. It eventually evolved into the vegan Now and Zen Restaurant. During the holiday season, she would make the vegan Unturkey (a seitan roast with a yuba shell), which she exhibited at the 1995 Natural Products Expo (and ended up with $50,000 worth of orders).

Natural Food Company

In 1997, Schinner sold the restaurant and created a vegan natural foods company called Now and Zen that focused on The Unturkey. However, as more orders came in for the Unturkey as well as different products, Schinner found herself overwhelmed. She also found investors more interested in investing in tech, as it was the dot-com boom. .....

Cookbooks

During this period, Schinner produced three vegan cookbooks. VegNews listed The New Now and Zen Epicure as one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.

Artisan Vegan Cheese (2012)

In 2012, Schinner published Artisan Vegan Cheese, a cookbook that focused entirely on the production of vegan cheese. In 2021, Food & Wine referred to it as "the seminal cookbook that put vegan cheesemaking on the map," and VegNews listed it as one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024.

Miyoko's Kitchen/Miyoko's Creamery (2014-2023)

Schinner founded Miyoko's Kitchen in 2014, as an online business. Her goal was to create dairy-free products including butter and a wide variety of different types of cheeses using traditional cheesemaking cultures and techniques, chiefly out of cashews, oats and chickpea flour. The startup swiftly accrued $1 million in seed money, first being invested in by Seth Tibbott, the founder of Tofurky.

Schinner launched the company with herself as CEO and four employees on a Friday, and by Monday they had 50,000 orders. In December of that year, it moved from a 4,000-square-foot facility to a 29,000-square-foot facility, located in Petaluma. Fundraising continued to grow: in 2017, it obtained $6 million in funding, for a total of $12 million. Eventually Schinner changed the name from Miyoko's Kitchen to Miyoko's Creamery.

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi made an investment in Miyoko's Creamery in November 2019. In addition to vending within the United States, Miyoko's Creamery expanded its market in 2019, distributing to Canada and Australia. Miyoko's Food Truck, in a Cross Country Tour starting from March 4, 2020, distributed 15,000 free grilled cheese sandwiches around the United States in order to promote cruelty-free vegan cheese in the Country. In August 2021, Miyoko's Creamery prevailed on First Amendment grounds in their lawsuit against the California Department of Food and Agriculture's attempts to force the company to cease using the words "Cheese" and "Butter" (among others) in the marketing of their products.

In February 2023, Miyoko's Creamery announced that Schinner was no longer CEO, and that it and Schinner had parted ways. A few weeks later, on February 16, Miyoko's Creamery filed a lawsuit against Schinner, alleging that she misappropriated confidential information and copied the data to her personal cloud after the board of directors voted to terminate her as CEO. The case was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Case 3:23-cv-00711. In response, on March 3, Schinner's attorney Lisa Bloom announced that she would be filing a wrongful termination counter lawsuit. Bloom stated: “The company's behavior in forcing her out of the company she created and built, then trashing her via an outrageously malicious and misleading lawsuit will be met with facts and witnesses showing that Miyoko's own complaints of toxic and sexist behavior by certain male executives were swept under the rug, and then she was demoted and fired.” On May 18, 2023, Miyoko's Creamery and Schinner released a joint announcement stating that "they have resolved all legal disputes between them and that they have withdrawn all legal claims made against each other." The announcement also stated that they both “wish each other well as they go their separate ways.”

Cookbooks

During this period, Schinner produced two vegan cookbooks published by Ten Speed Press. Her 2015 book, The Homemade Vegan Pantry was named one of the 16 best vegan cookbooks for 2023 by Food & Wine, and one of the best vegan cookbooks by Good Housekeeping. In addition, her 2021 publicationThe Vegan Meat Cookbook: Meatless Favorites. Made with Plants, was named one of the "best new cookbooks to start 2022" by The San Francisco Chronicle.

2023-present

In 2023, Schinner launched the YouTube cooking show, The Vegan Good Life with Miyoko. In 2024, Schinner joined the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business as a Lecturer, serving as a co-instructor (with program co-founder Brittany Sartor) in the Plant Futures Challenge Lab, where she teaches the course "Sustainable & Impact Finance." In Fall 2025, Ten Speed Press will release her cookbook The Vegan Creamery Cookbook.

Schinner also works with the animal sanctuary Rancho Compasion (which she founded in 2015).

Awards and honors

In 2018, Melaina Juntti of New Hope Network described Schinner as a "vegan rock star." Also in 2018, she was among 28 women featured in PopSugar's "28 Women Changing the World Right This Second" list, a project backed by UN Women. She is considered a pioneer in the production of vegan cheese.

In 2023, Tasting Table named Schinner as one of the “21 Plant-Based Chefs You Need To Know.” and VegNews listed her as one of the "37 Creative Chefs Crafting the Future of Vegan Food."

Personal life

Miyoko and Michael Schinner have three children, a son (a basketball player in Japan) and two daughters. They divorced in 2023.

See also

• List of social entrepreneurs
• List of vegan and plant-based media