industry intro part1 kai

8/2/2019 Industry Intro Part1 Kai

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Family restaurants are a type of casual dining restaurants where food is served on

platters and the diners serve themselves. The emergence of family restaurants in Japan

has filled the gap between gourmet restaurants and fast food joints. A restaurant called

Skylark, which is considered as the first family restaurant in Japan, was opened in

Fuchu, Tokyo, by Kotobuki Food in 1970. The company, now called Skylark Group,

has then converted the Skylark eateries into a new restaurant chain called Gusto,

which is one of the brands we will investigate in this report. Since then, family

restaurants developed rapidly in Japan. According to Fuji Keizai, the sale of family

restaurants is 1.436 trillion in 2010, falling from the peak of 1.7 trillion in 2000.

There were around 12240 family restaurant outlets throughout Japan in last year.

They are usually located in the cities and suburbs area. Despite the declining trend in

recent years, family restaurants still hold an important position in the restaurants

serving industry in Japan. Having known the development history of family

restaurants, lets have a deeper understanding on what they really are.

Family restaurants pose a casual feeling to their customers and offer a diversified

menu rather than specializing in specific type or style of cooking. The basic menu in a

family restaurant consists of 55-65 items, excluding sets (i.e. rice & drink set, bread

and coffee set). The menu is generally divided into categories of: steak, hamburger

steaks, chicken, spaghetti, doria-gratin, Japanese, Chinese, salads, side menus,

desserts and drinks. A lot of them also provide modest alcoholic beverages and free

coffee refills. The food served is in moderate quality. The intense competitive arena

of restaurants serving industry force family restaurants to place a premium on

products that is seen to be healthy and can be differentiated from competitors.

In addition to the variety of food, the prices of them are also attractive.

According to market researcher Fuji Keizai Co.'s Shuten Tanaka, the expense per

head in family restaurants is around 500 to 3,000 per head comparing to 400


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-2000 per head for fast food chains and 1200 to 5000 per head for upper class

restaurants. In fact, the menus of family restaurants are carefully decided so that cost

will not be too high even with a large variety of dishes and thus the reasonable price

can compete in the catering market.

The comfortable atmosphere of family restaurants is also appealing to customers.

The premises of family restaurants are well-lit, spacious, and standardized. Majority

of them operate from morning to evening, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their

major target customers are family group and students. Some even open 24 hours a day.

This makes family restaurants welcomed by the general public.

Apart from food variety, food price and premise atmosphere, a stores

convenience in terms of proximity and parking availability has great effect on

customers choice of family restaurant for meals. To compete for customers, most of

the family restaurants are usually located in large buildings (often with substantial

parking lots) and places near to train stations, which are with strong flow of people.

In order to compete in the restaurants industry, some family restaurants even

provide additional services to their customers, for instance, free-wifi, online purchase

and food delivery.

There are lots of popular brands in the family restaurants industry in Japan. The

Skylark Group is the largest operator, operating the successful and widespread chains

like Jonathans Gusto, Bamiyan, Yumean and Aiya. Dennys, a popular brand from

US, are runned by Seven & I Food Systems Co. Zensho Co. launch Coco s, Big Boy

and Jolly Pasta while Royal Holdings Co. operates Royal Host and Saizeriya Co. has

Saizeriya. Among these brands, Saizeriya (serving Italian food), Bamiyan (serving

Chinsese food) , Gusto and Dennys (both serving a wide spread of items not tied to

one ethnicity) are the most popular in Japan according to a research conducted by

Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute in 2010.


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Reference:

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2410.html

http://hello-global.com/japan_market_research/japan_consumer_surveys20100423.ht

ml**

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110125i1.html

http://www.jmr-marketing.com/user/750/Food_Chain_Ranking/
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2410.htmlhttp://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2410.htmlhttp://hello-global.com/japan_market_research/japan_consumer_surveys20100423.htmlhttp://hello-global.com/japan_market_research/japan_consumer_surveys20100423.htmlhttp://hello-global.com/japan_market_research/japan_consumer_surveys20100423.htmlhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110125i1.htmlhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110125i1.htmlhttp://www.jmr-marketing.com/user/750/Food_Chain_Ranking/http://www.jmr-marketing.com/user/750/Food_Chain_Ranking/http://www.jmr-marketing.com/user/750/Food_Chain_Ranking/http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110125i1.htmlhttp://hello-global.com/japan_market_research/japan_consumer_surveys20100423.htmlhttp://hello-global.com/japan_market_research/japan_consumer_surveys20100423.htmlhttp://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2410.html

industry intro part1 kai

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