GRINNELL — Soy-based smoothies and yogurt may not be the first things to come to many Iowans’ minds when they think about snacks. However, one taste may explain why’re they’re already so popular among health-conscious consumers on the West and East coasts.

Wildwood Natural Foods Inc., whose Grinnell plant is the sole facility in the United States dedicated to making these cultured soy-based concoctions, is now betting that this small town will beat the odds to be selected as the U.S. headquarters for a major Korean company that has invested in it.

In April, Wildwood entered into a strategic alliance with Pulmuone U.S.A. Inc., whose Korean parent, Pulmuone Co. Ltd., is the largest player in the global tofu industry. For $5 million, Pulmuone purchased a “substantial” equity position in Wildwood, and an entrée into the U.S. natural foods market.

“Our strategy is to hit the major metro markets in the United States,” said Tom Lacina, chief operating officer of Wildwood, whose cultured soy- and tofu-based foods are now distributed in about a dozen major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and New York.

The U.S. prepared soyfoods market, which has seen double-digit growth in recent years, is expected to reach $4.8 billion in sales by the end of 2005. The growth can be attributed to increased consumer awareness and products that are continually improving in quality, said Linda Funk, executive director of The Soyfoods Council, a national soybean industry promotion organization based in Urbandale.

U.S. soyfoods companies are “really making their products appeal to mainstream consumers, which is really great,” she said. “It has to taste good and be exactly what they expected the first time out.”

Wildwood’s products are “absolutely fabulous,” she added. “They’ve done so much R&D work that their flavor and consistency are just wonderful.”

Lacina, whose grandfather started the family farm near Grinnell in 1928, formed Midwest Harvest Corp. six years ago to manufacture tofu as an alternative to shipping the raw beans to Asia.

“We began as very committed to health, nutrition, interest in land use and diversity of diet,” said Lacina. “We were focusing on the Midwest consumer, where obesity is a major health problem.”

Midwest Harvest’s strategic merger in 2001 with Wildwood Natural Foods, a California-based tofu manufacturer and distributor, gave the company a strong foothold on the West Coast. Wildwood is currently the top West Coast seller of plain tofu, veggie burgers and flavored tofu products, and among the top five nationally. The company’s Grinnell-made cultured soy smoothies and yogurt products are approaching the No. 3 place in U.S. sales, Lacina said.

Pulmuone, already a major player in the Korean ethnic foods market in the United States, was looking for a partner to help them enter the mainstream natural foods market, he said.

“They were actually intrigued with us because we held the philosophy of a company with a social mission,” Lacina said. Pulmuone was originally founded in Korea as a Christian food cooperative in 1955. It’s now a $250 million company with about 4,000 employees.

Pulmuone is now deciding where to locate many of its corporate functions in the United States, and Grinnell may be the top choice, said Paul Kang, a former Procter & Gamble Co. executive who in April was named Wildwood’s president and CEO.

“In terms of where our market is, most of it’s on the coasts,” said Kang, who works from the company’s California office. “On the other hand, there are a number of reasons why we have an interest in Iowa. Probably the leading one is having access to the kind of people we want and trying to have the culture that we want in the United States. We like that (Grinnell is) a small town, we like the legal and tax system in Iowa. And clearly, the educational system is very supportive there as well.”

If Wildwood gets a go-ahea d on the incentives it’s requested from the state, including possible Grow Iowa Values Fund money, Pulmuone U.S.A-Wildwood. may reach a decision regarding Grinnell as early as next week, Kang said. The Iowa Department of Economic Development’s next scheduled board meeting is on Thursday.

A positive decision would mean about 130 additional positions in Grinnell, Kang said. Those would range from accounting and computer support positions to research and development and manufacturing jobs.

Iowa Agricultural Finance Corp., which invested a total of $7.2 million in Wildwood to finance construction of its Grinnell plant and development of its cultured soy products, foresees a “home run” for Iowa if Pulmuone decides to put its U.S. headquarters here, said Daniel Pitts Winegarden, the organization’s president. A for-profit investor in value-added agricultural processing and biotechnology companies, the corporation also assisted Midwest Harvest in its business plan to merge with Wildwood Natural Foods.

“Our goal in investing in Wildwood initially was to bring the company to sufficient scale and prominence to attract national or international partnership for strategic growth,” Winegarden said. “We’ve achieved that with the alliance with Pulmuone. It looks like that could be a real home run for Wildwood and Iowa.”

Pulmuone has the resources to take Wildwood’s brands national, which in turn would bring Iowa Agricultural Finance closer to being able to sell its stock so it can invest in other value-added companies, Winegarden said.

“There’s no specific time for that exit, but we hope that the plan with Pulmuone will create appropriate exit opportunities,” he said.

Kang said Pulmuone’s sales goals for Wildwood are “reasonably aggressive.”

“We have grown 20 to 30 percent in the past few years,” he said. “In the U.S. we’d like to grow faster than that, and also make acquistions. Within three to five years we’d like to be at about $100 million in revenues, about an eightfold increase.”