New York and BeijingJune 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Recently, Knorr Professional Chef Soy Sauce, alongside 164 Chinese chefs, made a striking appearance on the core big screen of New York’s Times Square. At the “Crossroads of the World,” they paid tribute to Chinese chefs globally, allowing more people to see the professional strength behind the cuisine. The lens linked a single drop of soy sauce to the unique, bustling atmosphere of a Chinese kitchen. These 164 chefs, representing various culinary traditions and spanning different generations, appeared one after another amid flickering flames, showcasing their dedicated craftsmanship in Chinese flavors.
As a brand under Unilever Food Solutions, Knorr has long been deeply rooted in the Chinese food market, consistently adhering to its original brand philosophy of “understanding chefs, serving chefs.” This event marks another significant move by Knorr to bring Chinese chefs into the broader public spotlight, following its 2014 initiative to gather over a hundred renowned chefs on the Great Wall to support the UNESCO bid for Chinese cuisine, and its 2018 effort to unite over 120,000 chef colleagues across the country to set a Guinness World Record.
Insight into Trends: Anchoring the Professional Chef Track
Currently, China’s food service market is entering a new cycle of development. Zhou Yingjie, Food General Manager of Unilever Food Solutions North Asia, mentioned during the recent “2026 Future Food Trends Report” event: “Consumers today have higher demands for the authenticity, consistency, and experiential quality of dishes. Stable output, authentic flavors, and distinctive characteristics have become key topics in helping restaurants build their core competitiveness.”
This also means that dishes are undergoing a comprehensive upgrade in terms of “color, aroma, and taste.” As the “soul” of the Chinese seasoning system, soy sauce carries the core expression of authentic “Chinese flavors” and must precisely match the advanced professional needs of chefs in controlling heat and cooking techniques.
However, a long-overlooked industry reality is that the complexity of a professional kitchen far exceeds the cognitive boundaries of home cooking. “Why does a home kitchen need only 1-2 types of soy sauce to cook dishes, while a professional restaurant kitchen requires 6-8 different types?” The answer is simple: professionalism cannot tolerate “close enough.” With wok temperatures exceeding 200°C for stir-frying, cooking times ranging from 10 seconds to over 10 hours, and a much wider variety of ingredients and seasonings, the operational scenarios unique to professional kitchens demand more refined performance from soy sauce in dishes.
Based on this insight, since 2022, Knorr has conducted systematic research and in-depth co-creation with over a thousand senior Chinese chefs across more than 20 cities in China, re-examining the role and value of soy sauce in professional kitchens.
Professional players need professional tools. Stable, efficient, and predictable output capabilities are the true foundation for restaurants to navigate market cycles and win competition. This is the fundamental reason Knorr chose to open up the “professional chef soy sauce track”—to move from understanding chefs’ real and complex needs to precisely fulfilling them, ultimately translating them into actionable product solutions.
Hardcore Quality: Strengthening Professional Product Standards
To precisely address the pain points of various application scenarios in professional kitchens, Knorr officially launched its Professional Chef Soy Sauce series in May this year. With a systematic soy sauce product matrix, it comprehensively covers chefs’ one-stop needs for color, aroma, and taste. Among them, the flagship product, Knorr Fresh Supreme First-Extract Brewed Soy Sauce, is designed for high-temperature, quick-cooking scenarios like stir-frying and clay pot cooking, delivering rapid aroma, rich flavor, and lasting taste. The newly launched Knorr Natural Fresh Light Soy Sauce meets chefs’ professional needs for natural umami enhancement without overpowering flavors in various stir-frying, braising, cold mixing, and dipping applications. Knorr Superior Color Dark Soy Sauce directly addresses the pain point of “easy darkening,” helping chefs achieve a stable, bright red color in one step.
Behind the Knorr Professional Chef Soy Sauce series lies the brand’s pursuit of ultimate stability and innovative professional product capabilities. Leveraging Unilever’s mature and comprehensive global supply chain, the newly built soy sauce brewing factory achieves professional, standardized, and fully closed-loop control of soy sauce production. In terms of raw materials and processes, Knorr selects red wheat for natural brewing, combined with core techniques such as self-developed bacterial fermentation and single pressing, defining quality standards from the source.
Beyond product innovation, Knorr actively takes on the responsibility of industry leadership, collaborating with authoritative institutions like the China National Research Institute of Food and Fermentation Industries to advance research on scientific soy sauce brewing and professional kitchen applications. They continuously refine and optimize professional kitchen soy sauce production and build industry application standards for soy sauce flavor, color, and fermentation technology, promoting the scientific, refined, and standardized upgrade of the Chinese seasoning system. Making professionalism evidence-based and flavors stable and controllable—this is the seasoning evolution for professional kitchens.
Omni-Channel Empowerment: Driving High-Quality Development of Chinese Cuisine
From industry insights to professional product refinement, from building platforms to support chef growth to stepping onto the international stage to amplify the voice of Chinese chefs, Knorr consistently stands with chefs and advances alongside the industry. In the future, Knorr will continue to base itself on the real needs of professional kitchens, leveraging a comprehensive product matrix and systematic food service solutions to help chefs achieve more efficient and stable output, propelling the Chinese food industry toward a higher quality stage of development.
Knorr joins 164 Chinese chefs on the core big screen of New York’s Times Square