A Tainan mill with 82 staff.

Uni-President — 統一, “Tongyi,” in Chinese — was founded on 25 August 1967 in Tainan, in southern Taiwan. Chinese Wikipedia places its first works in Xuejia, then a town in Tainan County, and names its first chairman as Wu Hsiu-chi and its first general manager as Kao Ching-yuen; the company’s own timeline says the two men started it with 82 employees. English Wikipedia lists Kao as the founder, and both men appear in the company’s account. Kao ran the business as general manager until 1989 and became chairman in 2003, when Wu stepped down after more than three decades in the post.

The company did not begin with noodles or drinks. It milled flour and made animal feed, which is how English Wikipedia, citing Taiwan Panorama and a 1993 study of Tainan business groups in The Developing Economies, describes its start. That study’s subject, the Tainan Group, is the loose network of Tainan businessmen to which Chinese Wikipedia says Uni-President belongs as the leading firm. In November 1968, the company says, it began technical cooperation with Nisshin, a Japanese flour miller, and in October 1969 it put Uni-brand flour and feed on sale.

The next step was the product that made the name familiar. On 29 March 1970, according to the company timeline, Uni noodles (統一麵) went on sale. By 1972 the business had been split into four divisions — flour, food, feed and oils — and a new oil refinery was running. In 1974 it invested in a tinplate and can-making company, and in 1975 it took over a dairy plant at Qiaotou, which Chinese Wikipedia says led to a dairy division set up with technical help from Meiji Dairies. In 1977 it bought a small food company and used its team to develop a soy milk drink, and in 1978 it opened a works at Zhongli to make bread and cakes. Chinese Wikipedia says its headquarters today are in Yongkang, Tainan.

Noodles, tea and a convenience store.

In Taiwan, Uni-President sells under a long list of brand names. Its instant-noodle names include Uni noodles, Science Noodles (科學麵) and the Man Han Feast range, and its drinks include Mai Hsiang black tea, Cha Li Wang tea and Pure Tea. The company says Mai Hsiang, launched on 3 May 1983, was Taiwan’s first packaged tea drink, and that Pure Tea, launched in May 1993, was the world’s first chilled tea in a paper carton; both are the company’s claims. It also makes Ruisui milk, puddings, breads, juices and coffee drinks such as Left Bank Café, as Chinese Wikipedia’s product list shows.

Its other big move was into shops. On 20 October 1979, the company says, it signed with the Southland Corporation of the United States to bring 7-Eleven to Taiwan. The convenience-store division became a separate company, President Chain Store Corporation, in June 1987, the year Uni-President listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (28 December 1987). Chinese Wikipedia says a perpetual 7-Eleven licence was signed in April 2000. According to CommonWealth Magazine in May 2020, President Chain Store also runs Starbucks, Mister Donut and Muji in Taiwan, which made the group the island’s largest retail operator; the same article called Uni-President Taiwan’s largest food company.

The retail story kept growing. The company says it formed a joint venture with Carrefour in 1987 and opened Asia’s first Carrefour hypermarket in Kaohsiung at the end of 1989. In July 2022 it and President Chain Store agreed to buy most of Carrefour’s Taiwan business, a deal completed on 30 June 2023, and Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported in May 2026 that the stores would stop using the Carrefour name from July 2026. In September 2024 the company completed its purchase of a majority stake in Yahoo’s Taiwan e-commerce business, after approval from Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission, the Central News Agency reported.

The China business started with noodles. The company says its instant noodles were first produced and sold in Beijing in May 1992, and that its China investment company was set up in March 1998. English Wikipedia says Uni-President China Holdings, based in Shanghai and focused on drinks and instant noodles, listed in Hong Kong in December 2007. The company also says it won a Golden Bell award for advertising in March 1985.

Food groups and identity.

The seven brands in this group all make food or drink, and all of them come from China or Taiwan: Three Squirrels, Daoxiangcun, I-Mei, Kuai Kuai, Uni-President, Wei Chuan and C’estbon. Food and drink brands from China and Taiwan in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A snack or drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the treat or refreshment it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the city where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From two ears of wheat to a wing.

Uni-President is unusual in publishing the history of its own marks. Its website shows the founding emblem: the characters 統一 drawn into a stylised shape and ringed by two ears of wheat, a reference, the company says, to a business that then made only flour and feed. A second version reversed the emblem out of a rounded rectangle, added a small “happiness bird” at the top right and joined it to the company name in a block of colour. In 1983, the year the company says it ranked among Taiwan’s ten largest enterprises, a square frame was added, the bird was set on a ribbon and the slogan “Creating a healthy and happy tomorrow” became part of the mark.

The mark used today arrived on 1 July 1990, when the company says it launched a new corporate identity system built around a symbol called “Wings of Tomorrow.” The company says the shape grows out of the letter “P” of “President.” Its three slanting lines and upward-sweeping body stand, in the company’s words, for its motto of good quality, good credit, good service and a fair price, and the flat-cut base of the wing for stability and honesty. The English name changed too: on 1 May 1999 the company says it changed its English name from “President” to “Uni-President” to suit its international business, and Chinese Wikipedia notes that the 1990s English name was President Enterprises Corporation.

Three men have chaired the company. Wu was chairman from 1967 to 2003, Kao from 2003 until November 2013, and since then Lo Chih-hsien, whom Chinese Wikipedia describes as Kao’s son-in-law. Kao died in April 2016, Apple Daily and the Liberty Times reported at the time. The company’s timeline names Kuo Ching-feng as general manager from June 2025, and it remains listed in Taipei. Its production base includes a large site at Hukou in Hsinchu County, completed in May 2016, the China Times reported, alongside older plants such as Zhongli. Its baseball team, the Uni-President Lions, was formed in 1989, English Wikipedia says.

For a design guide, Uni-President shows how a company can redraw its mark as it grows: a wheat wreath for a mill, a bird for a consumer brand, and a single winged letter for an international group. Compare it with its old Taipei rival Wei Chuan and with Kikkoman, with which the company says it formed a joint venture in 1990. For this guide we use President orange, brick red, wheat gold and ink with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Uni-President’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.