Overseas franchises expand the overseas market for Japanese food!
Ascentia Holdings Corporation (Head office: Kobe; Representative: Akira Tsuchiya) has opened a new ramen franchise in Paris, a bustling city on the eve of the Olympic Games.
The new ramen restaurant was opened by Takesan Ramen (Miso Noodle Co., Ltd.; Head office: Obuse-cho, Shimotakai-gun, Nagano; Representative: Tetsuaki Takeda), which soft-opened a miso ramen restaurant based on the earthenware pot concept on 13 April 2024 near the Opera House in central Paris, France, followed by a grand opening on 18 May. Taken. This is Takesan's third overseas branch, following two in Mongolia. How is it that a ramen restaurant founded in 2008 in Nagano, opened its Obuse branch in 2018 and as of today has only one shop in Obuse, is able to develop an overseas franchise?
The means of overseas expansion in the form of franchising opens up new possibilities for the Japanese food service industry.
Why Miso Ramen?
In April 2024, we opened a ramen restaurant in Paris, France.
We would like to leave you with a trace of the events leading up to that opening.
We, Ascentia Holdings, are a company that supports the opening and expansion of various Japanese brands abroad.
So far, we have opened about 200 shops in 27 countries over the past 15 years or so.
70% are in the food and beverage industry and the rest are in the retail services industry.
We have mainly been in Asia and ASEAN areas, but in the last few years we have expanded to the EU, the Middle East, Oceania, the US and Africa.
We had already expanded our pork-bone and soy sauce ramen business to about 35 outlets in Asia, but what we learnt there is that ramen is not a noodle dish but a category of 'soup food' in other countries. Muslims are also interested in ramen, but they cannot eat pork bones. There was also a movement against the chemical seasonings that are associated with ramen.
In addition, when we analysed the number of entries to the menu of one of the first ramen chains in the US and found that miso ramen was highly rated, we were convinced that miso was the ramen where the soup could take centre stage, and we began to search for miso ramen all over Japan.
Our representative Tsuchiya says: "When it comes to miso ramen, Sapporo is the place to be!" He visited five or six of the most popular miso ramen restaurants in Sapporo every day for three days.
The conclusion, however, was that none of the miso ramen restaurants in Sapporo had the "distinctive miso" that our representative was looking for.
It is true that Sapporo is not famous for making miso. Miso ramen is often associated with pork or chicken broth, with miso playing a supporting role.
What is to be done?
How do you find a true miso ramen restaurant?
When I was thinking about this, I saw a post on SNS by the president of a design company I had known for some time about a new miso ramen restaurant in Nagano, so I contacted him and immediately went to try it out.
It was "Takesan", which had been established in 2008 as [earthenware pot] [miso] ramen by the owner, who had been trained in the Yokohama family lineage and wanted to "create Nagano's local ramen".
We visited Takesan with high expectations, but Takesan's miso ramen was still pork miso, as the owner's training was in the family lineage.
We were very disappointed, and we told them that the main reason we were looking for miso ramen - a ramen restaurant aiming for the world - needed a halal menu without pork, a vegan menu without animal products, and if possible, a signature menu where miso stands out without chemical seasonings.
The owner, a ramen creator, created a prototype in two weeks.
We went to try it and, despite some improvements, the result was the 'earthenware pot miso vegan ramen', which is also the signature dish at the Paris restaurant we opened this time, and is free from animal products and chemical seasonings.
The Obuse branch opened in January 2018 with this vegan ramen as its core product under the trade name 'Shinshu Miso Kura Ramen'.
The company operating this ramen shop is the company behind the "Nagano Clay Pot Miso Ramen" shop in Paris, President Takeda, who has now become our partner.
With our support, the shop was franchised in a short period of time and a training system from overseas was set up to develop the business overseas. We have also established a company called Miso Noodle for the franchise headquarters.
www.miso-noodle.com
International expansion is a constant process of trial and error
In 2019, the first country we opened a franchise in was Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
A Mongolian company approached us to develop some Japanese brands, and after many meetings on Zoom, we invited them to Japan for a franchise inspection tour.
After visiting several food and beverage brands in Japan, including brands in regional cities, they finally chose Takesan Ramen.
The project started without knowing much about the Mongolian food and beverage market, the customer base for the same type of business, the location, etc., but with the cooperation of the franchisees on the Mongolian side, a second shop has now opened and continues to generate stable sales.
Building and running a shop in Ulaanbaatar, where temperatures drop to minus 45 degrees Celsius in winter, was a new experience for us, but both shops are establishing themselves as representative ramen shops in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar.
Aiming for the EU!
In 2019, before Corona, we touched the EU for the first time as Miso Noodle company.
With the recommendation of a trading company we were working with, we opened a stall at the world's largest vegan festival (Vegan Summer Festival Berlin 2019, Berlin).
As it was a vegan festival, the only product was a vegan ramen, Shinshu Miso Kura Ramen.
Since it was a pop-up shop, we considered a simplified way to make the ramen and opened a three-day stall.
Needless to say, we were the only Japanese company to open a pop-up shop, and we sold more than 1,000 portions in three days, making us very attractive to the EU market.
We planned to expand into the EU at once, and then, to our surprise, Corona came along.
For about three years, we were doing nothing, but working remotely in Japan and sending out information to foreign countries. Corona came to an end before Japan, and the whole world started to open up (although Japan was very slow to open up), so we resumed actual inspection tours to Japan after fully understanding each other remotely. Participation gathered from London and from Paris for the franchise inspection tour to Japan.
From Paris, France, a young couple with high business ambitions took part in the tour. Paris is already experiencing a ramen boom and they wanted to find a ramen brand that could compete with it.
After a few days of visiting several ramen franchises, they chose Miso Noodle's Takesan Ramen.
Their decision-making point was "storytelling", they later recalled.
France is a country with a long history. Japan is the same, but with a long history and culture. The French say they are moved by things with history.
The miso for Takesan Ramen is made exclusively for Takesan by a 240-year-old miso brewery in the area next to the Obuse branch, using traditional wooden barrels.
This history and story is what captured their hearts when they came from France.
After the inspection tour, the contract and other details were done remotely and they started to search for a property.
They concentrated their search in the Saint-Anne area of Paris, where Japanese restaurants are concentrated.
Through their various contacts and our correspondent in Paris, they obtained information that a sushi restaurant that had been in business for nearly 40 years was thinking of closing, negotiated terms with the owner, and finally came to a property contract.
Design & construction supervision was mainly remote!
As all the buildings in central Paris are old, there were no accurate drawings, so the designers visited the shop from Japan, took measurements and drew up drawings. Designing in central Paris, where landscape ordinances and urban landscape regulations are strict, was extremely difficult. After many remote adjustments, the design was accepted and construction began, but due to a 'typical overseas situation', construction was delayed by six months and the scheduled opening in November 2023 was postponed to April 2024. We had planned to have a grand opening with influencers invited, but two days before the opening, the fire service found some improvements during their inspection, and the gas was turned off. We opened the restaurant as a soft opening, with only as much of the menu as we could cook without using city gas at short notice. Of course, ramen was served. （As a result, the soft opening was a good training period for the restaurant staff, and the grand opening was held in mid-May after some announcements were made on social networking sites. Currently, the average customer spend is €20. As this was a franchise development, finding and signing local properties, meeting with construction companies, applying for various official regulations, recruiting and training personnel, etc. would not have been possible without the local franchisees. President Takeda flew to Paris twice, once for the soft opening and once for the grand opening, and as a result, I think we had a very successful opening. With the recent prolonged depreciation of the yen and uncertainty in the Japanese food and beverage market, overseas expansion has become big news in recent years. I believe that more and more food and beverage companies will be aiming overseas in the future. We believe that the best way to expand overseas is through franchising, and we hope that the experience and information we have accumulated in the past will help the Japanese food service industry to expand overseas in the future.
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