Buzz
By Karina Martinez-Carter
Many people take the messages in their fortune cookies to heart. After finishing their meal at a Chinese restaurant, they eagerly open the golden crescent-shaped cookies, searching for glimpses of their future, hidden truths, or profound wisdom. Some even keep their favorite messages, tucking them into their wallets.
However, these quirky messages don’t come from some mystical source. Instead, they’re crafted in a few select factories, each producing over 4 million tiny slips of advice every day.
Wonton Food, Inc. is the largest producer of fortune cookies and their messages globally. Established in 1973 and headquartered in the New York City area, with an additional facility in Houston, Wonton Food ships between 4.5 million and 5 million fortune cookies daily to restaurants across the U.S., as well as to Canada, Latin America, and Europe.
Founded in 1996 and based in San Francisco, Yang's Fortunes, Inc. specializes in printing, cutting, and packaging fortunes for other companies to bake into cookies. Yang's produces approximately 4 million fortunes every day.
Fortune cookies are notably absent from Chinese restaurants in China, yet in Westernized Chinese dining, they are an expected treat at the end of a meal or as part of a take-out order. Both Wonton Food and Yang's Fortunes began by focusing on other Chinese culinary products but later saw the growing popularity of fortune cookies and their witty messages, capitalizing on the trend.
In 2005, The New Yorker profiled Donald Lau, who was the vice president of Wonton Food, Inc. at the time and the man behind the creation of the fortunes. Lau wrote fortunes in between other tasks, finding inspiration from various sources — including subway signs, as The New Yorker recounts. Over time, the company enlisted freelance writers to help supplement Lau’s production of fortunes.
Lisa Yang, vice president of Yang's Fortunes and daughter of founder Steven Yang, also found herself involved in writing fortunes. When her father ventured into fortune printing, he hired a writer to translate Chinese proverbs. However, the translations often lost their meaning, making them nonsensical. Lisa Yang would edit these fortunes during her free time. While in college, she devoted significant time to writing and refining fortunes, even when a writer and a teacher were hired to assist. Lisa would often turn to books of quotes and daily horoscopes to help spark new ideas for messages.
Yang became a full-time member of her family's business in 2005, following her college graduation. Today, the company boasts a database of around 5,000 fortunes, but there is no dedicated staff member specifically tasked with creating new ones. Nonetheless, Yang occasionally contributes new fortunes when the mood strikes her. She confesses to spending some evenings browsing blogs focused on fortune cookies. "I think it's fun being the person behind this," she shared. "Fortune cookies are such a part of our lives. Even when I go to a Chinese restaurant, I always share my fortune out loud with friends. We always want to know what the other one has."
Fortune messages are sometimes adjusted based on customer feedback. For instance, the phrase "You will meet a tall, dark stranger" was removed after some people found it unsettling.
Wonton Food hires freelance writers every couple of years to generate fresh messages for their expansive database, which contains about 15,000 fortunes. "We recognize that cracking open a fortune cookie is an exciting moment, which is why we refresh our database — to create exciting experiences for people," says Danny Zeng, vice president of sales. One of the most recent efforts to spice up the fortunes involved making the typically vague, uplifting messages a bit more provocative, with lines like "The evening promises romantic interest" or "Romance and travel go together." However, the company received some complaints about children encountering such messages. "We want to create excitement, but not offend," Zeng explains.
Yang is often surprised by how many people are unaware that she and her family are behind many of the fortune cookies they receive. Customers often pull their favorite fortunes from their wallets to show her. And while discovering the business behind these seemingly prophetic fortune cookie messages might be a bit of a letdown, they can still hold onto the idea that fate or the universe somehow conspired to place that specific cookie in their hands.
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