Hiroyuki Miyasako’s “taste of his parents’ home…Why are okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and yakisoba “flour-based food restaurants” going bankrupt one after another nowadays?

A string of “closures”…second-highest level on record

Okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and yakisoba restaurants are disappearing from street corners. Behind this is a situation that reflects the times. Lovers have the option of buying frozen foods and eating them at home, but the common people will miss these stores because they were the only places where they could casually drop by.

Hiroyuki Miyasako, formerly of “Ameagari Kesshitai,” reported on his YouTube page in April of this year that the takoyaki restaurant “Miyatako desu. near Gotanda Station, Tokyo, will close at the end of April.

Miyatako’s restaurant will be closing at the end of this month.

Miyatako further explained the reason for the closure as follows.

The Corona incident had a big impact on us, and the flow of customers did not return after the Corona closed.

The takoyaki restaurant in Gotanda is said to have opened in April 2003 as a branch of a takoyaki restaurant owned by Miyasako’s family in Osaka.

On this site of Miyasako’s, there are written comments from fans regretting the closure of the restaurant, such as “I’m sorry and sad.

Okonomiyaki and takoyaki, called “konamon,” are popular foods mainly in Osaka and other parts of the Kinki region, and many restaurants offer them.

Recently, “Hyotan,” a takoyaki restaurant located in Yodogawa-ku, Osaka City, near Juso Station on the Hankyu Line, closed its doors on November 28. At 400 yen for 10 pieces, the restaurant was popular among the locals for its common fare. When the decision to close was posted on the restaurant’s X (formerly Twitter) page, people who appeared to be customers wrote such comments as “I’m so sad.

Kiyomi, an okonomiyaki restaurant located in Sumiyoshi Ward, Osaka City, a few minutes’ walk from Sumiyoshi Higashi Station on the Nankai Electric Railway Koya Line, closed its doors on September 30. It is said to have been visited not only by local customers but also by konamon lovers from all over Japan.

Stores serving konamon are built in a folksy style, allowing customers to casually enter and eat at the store, or take the freshly baked hot food home to eat. Although there are no detailed statistics on the trend of konamon stores, the disappearance of such familiar stores is a sad sight for konamon lovers.

Okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and yakisoba stores are not only closing voluntarily. Bankruptcies of companies operating small-scale restaurants surged in the first half of this fiscal year (April to September), reaching the second-highest level on record, according to a survey by Tokyo Shoko Research, a private research firm. According to the report, the number of bankruptcies of okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and yakisoba restaurants in the first half of this fiscal year totaled 12, a six-fold increase over the same period last year. This is the second highest number of bankruptcies in the first half of the year since the first two years of 2010 and 2014, following 13 in 2003.

Local “familiar tastes” difficult to pass on…unable to withstand rising costs, succession problems, and labor shortages

All of these bankruptcies are small in size, with less than 10 million yen in capital and less than five employees, and they all bring to light the reality that “flour-based” stores are struggling, according to the report.

An official from the Commerce and Industry Research and Information Department says , “More and more of them are going bankrupt because they have been struggling with sales and have been losing money, and it has become difficult for them to control rising costs. He further explains.

The number of konamon stores in the Kinki area is high and the number of bankruptcies is also high, but the number of bankruptcies in the Kanto area increased in the first half of this fiscal year.

The number of restaurant bankruptcies is increasing considerably, as ramen stores, which also use wheat as an ingredient, are also affected by increased costs. In addition to rising costs for food ingredients and utilities, there is a shortage of labor from the COVID-19 crisis, and even if customers recover, it may not be possible to attract staff. Shortages and rising labor costs have also had a considerable impact.”

Commerce and Industry Research cites rising prices of foodstuffs such as wheat and eggs, rising utility and other costs, and a shortage of part-time and other staff, in addition to rising labor costs, as the causes of bankruptcies. Meanwhile, as for the characteristics of bankruptcies in the first half of this fiscal year, seven of the 12 cases, or nearly 60%, were in the Kanto region. Commerce and Industry Research analyzes, “Perhaps the COVID-19 crisis has changed the situation, with the Kanto region surpassing the Kinki region for the first time in five years.

When a flour store goes bankrupt, “it is often the case that only one store closes, and there are few cases where another company buys the shop or otherwise transfers it to another company,” said a Shoko Research representative. The closure of a restaurant means that the taste of flour dumplings familiar to the locals is no longer passed on to the next generation.

The restaurant industry is facing a difficult business environment now that the Corona support is over. Bankruptcies are on the rise in all sectors of the food and beverage industry, including take-out and home delivery, and a shakeout is underway.” The Shoko Research staff believes that “people are becoming more thrifty, buying food and ingredients at supermarkets,” and that “even in the frozen food industry, there are differences in the way people eat flour-based foods.

Even frozen food is no different from powdered food, but the taste and mood are completely different from eating hot food at a street corner store. The street-corner koumon stores were among the most popular of all eating-out establishments, and their low prices made them easy to use, so the times have become lonely for lovers of this type of food.