Mamoru Kuramoto, representative board member of the International Ramen Association, sees ramen as a food that not only makes people happy while eating it, but can also energize entire communities. “I would like to convey the charm of ramen to many people,” he says, “and increase the number of ramen shop owners in Japan and other countries through our ramen shop consulting business.”

Since 2006, I have opened a number of restaurants of almost all types. Opening multiple ramen shops in 2011 was an opportunity for me to start a ramen shop consulting business. I set up the International Ramen Association in 2019.

There are many consultants who specialize in restaurants. However, unlike other companies in this field, we provide our clients with a series of comprehensive services, from property surveys to the development of menu items, the purchase of ingredients and even staff training.

This means you can open a ramen shop even if you lack restaurant management expertise. We are proud of our attentive and substantial services. If you pay for our support of opening your shop just once, we will stand by you until you are satisfied.

We go to the actual sites to check properties anywhere in Japan. If a client asks for advice regarding menu items, we will continue to serve them without extra charge even after they have opened.

Although some have mistaken us for a franchiser, we are not the holders of any brands. We simply provide support while our clients name their ramen shops and create their own brands. We will never request royalties. Conversely, clients can become franchisers by opening multiple restaurants.

One of our clients switched from another company to us because they were able to open two restaurants with us for the fee that would have been paid to a general consultant or franchiser. This may prove that you can open a restaurant at a relatively low cost if you use our services.

Serving the wider community

We believe that we can also contribute to community revitalization through ramen shop business consulting. One example of this is Dashi Ramen Kinzan, run by a company in Aomori specializing in soup stock.

They have manufactured and sold seafood-based stock for three generations. However, sales slumped and remained low after costs increased because of the reduced quantity of fish caught and declining demand for stock. To recover from this slump, they developed ramen dishes focused on the appeal of the stock—for example, ramen using unusual raw materials such as saury and crab, rather than standard ramen dishes using stock based on bonito, sea kelp or dried sardines.

Their restaurant became very popular with customers, who waited in line to eat there. Sales of their stock products increased as well, as these were stocked at the ramen shop. Their first ramen shop was opened in July 2021, and they opened their third shop two and a half years later. This indicates that their business is in good shape.

There is also the case of TAKEYA MISO Co., Ltd., a long-established miso soybean paste maker founded in 1872. We developed a ramen dish using their miso and opened a restaurant near Lake Suwa. The ramen shop instantly became very popular. It seems that they are deeply trusted by local people and popular among tourists because the shop is managed by a local company. This is true for Dashi Ramen Kinzan as well.

We would like to increase our concentration on regional energization by working with community-based companies and, as in these cases, developing ramen dishes using local specialties.

Ramen outreach overseas

We would like to focus on global expansion, too, for our future development. We have received orders for consulting from foreign customers. Our company name stems from this. Soon after receiving some orders from overseas, the Covid-19 pandemic began. We had to discontinue projects with overseas clients. Having finally resumed these projects in 2023, we are currently advancing businesses with several clients in different countries.

Having visited locations, we’ve realized that you cannot reproduce Japanese ramen if you use mainly local ingredients. If a restaurant offers a local ramen, they will be beaten in popularity by a shop that faithfully reproduces Japanese ramen. That is, you need the same ingredients that are used in Japan if you want to make your ramen shop popular. When I talked about this to the food manufacturer cooperating in our development of ramen, they began to help us, including considering the construction of a factory at a local site and sharing recipes with a local cooperating factory.

If ideas like these are realized, Japanese food manufacturers can capitalize on new business opportunities. In addition, if the supply of ingredients is stable, we will be able to deliver ramen to more people. We are willing to help our customers open ramen shops anywhere around the globe as long as someone is seriously interested. Ramen is already a national dish in Japan. Japanese ramen is positioned as representing Japanese culture overseas. We would like to make people all over Japan and around the world happy through ramen, a food loved by everyone.

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