Tokyo, 9 June, /AJMEDIA/
Curry rice is one of Japan’s favorite things to eat, and its favorite restaurant to eat it at is Cocoichibanya. Also known as Cocoichi, the chain, which was founded in 1978, has over 1,200 branches in Japan, making it the country’s most prominent curry specialty restaurant by far.
But while the taste of Cocoichi’s curry remains as beloved as ever, the chain has experienced a substantial drop in its number of customers, and the reason why appears, pretty clearly, to be its rising prices.
Cocoichi has a semi-customizable menu, in that customers can choose the type and spiciness of roux, amount of rice, and toppings for their curry rice. The prices for all of them, though, have been creeping higher and higher. The chain raised its prices twice in 2022, increasing prices for roux/rice and toppings by an average of 5.9 and 3.8 percent, respectively, in June of that year, and then again by 7.4 and 5.4 percent in December. Customers proved largely willing to eat those increased costs, but another round of price hikes came in August of 2024, raising curry/roux by an average of 10.5 percent and toppings by 13.5 percent, and those seem to be too much for many diners to swallow.
Between September of 2024 and February of 2025, the chain recorded a 5.2-percent drop in its number of total customers, compared to that period in the previous year. Customer numbers for this fiscal year, which started in March, are even worse so far, with 7.5 percent fewer customers in March and 6 percent fewer customers in April (compared to those months in 2024).
