Most Of The World's Fortune Cookies Are Produced By Just One Company

The United States has always had questions about Chinese cuisine. Are low mein and chow mein the same thing? How does dim sum work? Is MSG actually a myth? The list of questions goes on and on, but one question always seems to rise above the rest: where exactly do fortune cookies come from?

Although fortune cookies are nearly synonymous with Chinese restaurants, these cookies do not actually come from China. In fact, most of the world's fortune cookies come from an American company: Wonton Food Inc. While the company was founded by a Chinese immigrant, Chin Sun Wong, the corporation got its start in New York City.

Wonton Food Inc. makes fortune cookies in both plain and flavored forms, including chocolate and orange. Today, the company is still family- and minority-owned and operated with factories in New York, Texas, and Tennessee. It is known to be the largest manufacturer of not only fortune cookies but also noodles and wrappers in the United States.

Although Wonton Food Inc. produces the most fortune cookies today, initially the company was not focused on fortune cookies at all. In fact, it first started as a noodle shop in 1973 in a little store tucked away in New York City's Chinatown. A decade later, the company moved to Brooklyn and began expanding its product line and number of factories.

The company has since been passed down through the family and continues to mass-produce fortune cookies, among other products. Their factory in Queens, New York produces 4.5 million cookies per day alone. This includes vanilla, citrus, chocolate, and tri-flavored fortune cookies, the last of which combines all three flavors.

Even the fortunes that are placed inside the cookies are made in-house. The nephew of the company founder, James Wong, has the role of Chief Fortune Writer. He oversees and also writes the fortunes that go into the millions of cookies. Despite the massive success and proudly boasting the title of producing the most fortune cookies, Wonton Food Inc. is still seemingly a family business at heart.

Long before Wonton Food Inc. would claim its crown of producing the most fortune cookies in the world, the fortune cookie actually got its start in Japan. The specific origins are still somewhat uncertain but Japanese researcher Yasuko Nakamachi has found books from as far back as 1878 illustrating earlier iterations of the fortune cookie, known at the time as the "fortune cracker."

Much like the origins of the fortune cookie, the way it eventually wound up in the United States is also not known exactly. It is believed that Japanese immigrants brought the recipe with them between the 1880's and the 1900's. The Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco is often cited as the first restaurant in the United States to serve and popularize the snack, although this claim is disputed by other businesses in California.

Despite the obvious connection to Japanese history, the reason the fortune cookie ended up being associated with Chinese food is actually due to American consumers. After the internment and relocation of Japanese Americans began during World War II, many Japanese businesses closed up shop and Chinese businesses swooped in to fill in the gaps. This led to fortune cookies becoming a Chinese American commodity, eventually paving the way for Wonton Food Inc. to become the fortune cookie producer it is today.