Last Updated on August 31, 2023 by David
Japan’s methodical attention to quality at scale.
In my time in Tokyo I had a total of 9 meals. All of them were chain restaurants. In the States and in most countries around the globe, this is usually synonymous with fast food or run-of-the-mill food with no passion, love, or soul.
In Tokyo however, this is not necessarily true. In fact, it’s so rare that it’s a challenge to find food without soul or bad food even at a chain. Meals in Japan all follow a factory-like consistent process from kitchen to table (or counter). This is possible because of their steadfastness to process. They’ve figured out a great way to deliver quality content in a scalable fashion whereas in other parts of the world, scaling out can sometimes mean degrading quality.
Small hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Tokyo can achieve massive scale unlike what we’re used to seeing here in the States because of processes that tailor to quality rather than speed. Similar to building a good customer service culture, it’s the intent that truly counts. Any business can build a customer focused culture by picking metrics that are important to them. Speed is usually a top pick. Hours of availability is another. Our own team focuses on number of appreciations as a main metric to gauge customer happiness. Restaurants in Japan consciously avoids speed as the main metric to optimize. Quality on the other hand positively affects many other aspects of the kitchen-to-table process and generates much happier customers in the long run.
A machine to help you get a seat.Quality is simply about building products that meet the customers’ intended needs. Oftentimes, it’s easy for startups or even established businesses to lose track of that fact and play a game of “fast and loose” when it comes to quality.
The Japanese food industry can teach the world a thing or two not just about attention to detail but also discipline across the business in developing processes that can scale to daily demands.