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 Company Team Members:
Donny Cruz, President
I was born in 1975 in Knob Noster, Missouri, the seventh of ten children of Ted and Rowena Cruz. I graduated from Knob Noster High School in 1993. My dad's family heritage soy based sauce, from Guam, was a major part of my life. My dad, Teodoro, would always cook with it and use it on almost everything we would eat. The night before special occasions, my dad would marinade chicken, steaks, and pork. The next day my dad would cook out on the grill with the sweet aroma of the sauce circulating throughout the neighborhood. The neighbors would follow the smell of the sauce all the way to our house and join in on our gathering. I continued to notice how people loved the taste (a taste that pops and make the juices in the mouth hop around and go crazy) and smell of the sauce. The sauce would tend to make meats it was marinating in dance. One day at the age of 12, I told my mom that I wanted to bottle this sauce and sell it. I wanted to offer everyone the incredible taste of the islands that I enjoyed everyday. After graduating from high school, I attended Avila College in Kansas City, Missouri with the desire of bottling my family sauce still burning deep inside. At Avila, I began to study how to manufacture and market my sauce, while I was a member of the Avila baseball program. I left Avila in 1997, at which I accepted a sales position with Surrey Vacation Resorts, Inc., in Overland Park, Kansas. While at Surrey, I also worked at Prairie Life Center as a personal trainer. In 1999, I moved to Trend West, Inc., a nationwide retailer in vacation ownership timeshares. I am presently sales manager of the Explorer Program at Trend West. I am 28 years of age, single and live in Overland Park, Kansas.
During my stay at Prairie Life Center I would bottle up my sauce and share it with employees and members of the club. I began to find out that everyone was loving the taste of my family's sauce. I started to share my vision of bottling the sauce with everyone I came in contact. I persevered for over 6 years attempting to get my sauce bottled and into the market. People begin to tease me saying "aren't you that soy sauce boy, who tells us two more weeks until your product is in the market?" Even my family began to question whether I could make my dream come true. Finally, on March 28, 2003, Fred Ball of Ball's Foods gave me an opportunity to put my sauce into the local Hen Houses.
I have always wanted to Americanize soy sauce, by giving the American people an option from the traditional Asian soy sauces. I have wanted to show people that they can enjoy the health benefits of soy while also enjoying the taste. I want to educate people and show them that they can use the sauce as an everyday way of life on how they prepare their foods. My vision of creating The American Soy Sauce is beginning to come true and allowing people throughout the world the opportunity to get a taste of the islands no matter where they live. Over the years people have nicknamed me "Soy Boy," and I am excited about the opportunity to create Pacific Island American Soy Sauce into a branded sauce that people across the world will recognize and come to love.
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