Behind the Scenes of Heart-Throbbing Collaboration Café Menus Featuring Manga Anime and Idols

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Collaboration cafés allow fans to enjoy their favorite manga and anime through food. At popular locations, it’s common to wait several hours, and some require online reservations in advance. Social media is flooded with posts from fans sharing their experiences.

To uncover the behind-the-scenes of these collaboration café menus, we spoke with a menu creator who specializes in this field.

“Not long ago, collaboration cafés were seen as places for a select few to enjoy. However, recently, chain stores and famous hotels across the country have started hosting these events.

Now, we see not just anime fans but also general customers enjoying themselves. Some even visit multiple collaboration cafés in one day or drop by because they’re nearby.”

This was shared by Chihо Gunji from CollaboLic Table, a company that specializes in creating collaboration café menus.

From a young age, Chihо Gunji loved manga and anime, which led her to leave her job at a food-related company and switch to a collaboration café business.

Driven by her desire to transform the previously negative perceptions of collaboration café menus—often seen as “bad, terrible, or expensive”—into a new aspect of Japanese food culture, she founded her own company in 2022. Over the course of her seven years in the industry, including her time at the collaboration café company, she has developed over 2,000 collaborative menu items.

Today, Gunji is recognized as a leading figure in the industry, not only developing menus for collaboration cafés but also producing character cafés and proposing special menu items for fans. Despite her busy schedule, she remains a true manga enthusiast, visiting collaboration cafés three to four times a month.

“In popular manga and anime collaboration cafés, it’s now standard to require online reservations in advance to avoid chaos. 

When fans post images on social media after their visits, it creates a positive feedback loop that attracts new customers. It’s not an exaggeration to say we are truly in the ‘collaboration café era’ right now.”

But when did collaboration cafés actually begin, and how have they evolved into their current form?