Food wholesalers are helping to meet the demand for Japanese cuisine

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A Japanese restaurant here offers an array of dishes that will make diners feel like they are in Japan, including sake, braised pork belly and “soba” noodles.

One of the popular dishes at Takuma restaurant is vinegar-marinated sashimi mackerel, which is burned at the customer’s table.

“I want to eat these dishes myself,” says Takuma Suzuki, the 50-year-old owner of the establishment, referring to the entire range of delicious dishes on the menu.

Takuma is located across a boulevard in Santa Monica, which is famous for its beautiful beach that attracts many tourists.

A ginger pork bento box, offered for lunch, costs less than $20 (3,000 yen), even though the area is home to a large number of upscale restaurants.

Takuma’s customers include more locals than Japanese immigrants and tourists.

Suzuki, who has worked as a chef in the United States for nearly 30 years, said he believes Japanese cuisine is becoming more and more popular here every year.

There has been a growing number of people in recent years who are familiar with Japanese food very early in life, Suzuki added, referring to the generation of similar people as “sushi natives.”

A Japanese restaurant can therefore no longer expect to prosper simply by advertising itself as such.

That is why, in addition to sashimi, tonkatsu (fried pork cutlets) and other dishes that are known outside Japan, Suzuki has introduced the burnt mackerel and other dishes offers.

A growing number of Japanese restaurants abroad are catering to the increasingly demanding palates of their customers.

The popularity comes more than a decade after UNESCO listed ‘Washoku’, or traditional food cultures of the Japanese, on the list of intangible cultural heritage in 2013.

CRUCIAL SUPPLY LINE

Wholesalers of Japanese food products, the unsung heroes serving these restaurants, are increasingly making their role and presence felt in this trend.

Serious Japanese food chefs need to pay close attention to the ingredients they purchase, and wholesalers of Japanese food products have a place to turn.

Kikkoman Corp., of which Suzuki is a customer, is the market leader. It operates 65 wholesale bases in 23 countries around the world, including the United States.

The company, best known as a soy sauce maker, posted annual revenue of 343 billion yen ($2.27 billion) in the period ended March 2023 from overseas food wholesale, one of the Kikkoman Group’s profitable segments. .

The corresponding turnover figure has increased 3.6 times over the past decade, due in no small part to fluctuations in exchange rates as the yen has depreciated.

Kikkoman entered the food wholesale business in North America in 1969.

The segment experienced dramatic growth thanks to the McGovern Report, released in the United States in 1977, which recommended the prevention of lifestyle-related diseases.

The type of diet that the report said would be useful for that purpose evoked the image of Japanese food, which therefore began to attract attention.

The public craze for sushi and ramen also helped Kikkoman expand that line of business.

“Japanese food presented to overseas audiences was initially limited to tempura, sushi and other dishes,” said Osamu Mogi, head of Kikkoman’s international operations. “Over the past two decades, however, the diversity of Japanese cuisine has become known through online searches and other means, and that has created fads on a smaller scale.”

Mogi said many of the operators of Japanese restaurants abroad are non-Japanese.

Kikkoman has the strength because it can advise similar entrepreneurs not only on food ingredients, but also on broader topics related to restaurant design, such as the tableware used in a restaurant.

Kikkoman’s customer base is extensive and includes not only restaurants but also major retail chains such as Walmart Inc., Mogi said.

JAPANESE FOOD CULTURE IS SPREADING

Behind Kikkoman in Japan’s food wholesale business are Nishimoto Co., which operates Wismettac Group, and major sake brewer Takara Holdings Inc.

Nishimoto Wismettac began selling rice and canned foods to American retailers in the early 20th century for consumption by Japanese immigrants. The group posted annual revenues of 237 billion yen from wholesale Asian food products in 2023, up 1.7 times over the past five years.

Nishimoto Wismettac has acquired European-based food wholesalers and has also expanded its sales channels to retail stores.

That’s because Japanese food products, which are becoming daily staples, are no longer sold only in Japanese supermarkets as before, but are also making their way into local stores, company officials said.

Takara, for its part, acquired Foodex SAS, a French importer and wholesaler of Japanese food products, in 2010. The company has since acquired wholesale companies based outside Japan, most of them in the United States and Europe.

Takara posted annual sales of 121 billion yen from wholesale Japanese food products in the year ending March 2023, double the level five years earlier.

As Japanese culinary culture becomes more widespread, the company is also working to pitch sake, locally produced liquors and other products.

Agriculture Ministry figures show that there were about 187,000 Japanese restaurants abroad in 2023, more than three times as many as a decade earlier.

The number of similar establishments fell from the previous 2021 survey in North America as the novel coronavirus pandemic raged, but the corresponding number rose in other parts of the world or remained largely unchanged.

Kikkoman’s Mogi said he is pinning his hopes on the future growth of Japan’s food market.

“Japanese food currently only represents less than 1 percent of the food expenditures that Americans spend,” he said. “The picture would be very different if that grew to 2 percent.”