Search results for: “wagamama”

  • 1000 Yen Ramen wall

    Increased Japanese inflation is crushing restaurants due to the 1000 Yen Ramen wall. Ramen traditionally has been a working class food in Japan. It’s hearty, nourishing and flavoursome. Some ramen restaurants have even been listed in Michelin restaurant guides.

    Ramen from Bone Daddies

    The 1000 Yen note is the smallest denomination of note in Japanese country, rather like the 5 pound note in the UK or the 5 euro note in the EU. It’s about worth about £5.20 at the time of writing.

    Japan 1000 Yen Note 3706b

    Japan went through decades of deflation that flattened prices and made workers poorer. So being able to get a cheap nutritious meal during lunch time at work or after work was invaluable. It also meant that a bowl of ramen had cost 1000 Yen for a long time.

    Post-COVID supply chain driven inflation pushed the price above 1000 Yen. That’s when things get strange from a marketing perspective. Consumers who were used to paying 1000 Yen for their ramen couldn’t or wouldn’t pay more. Which is when ramen restaurants hit what the owners describe as the 1000 Yen ramen wall.

    In marketing terms this wall is known as a marketing pricing dead zone. Dead zones revolve around three key factors:

    • Customer segmentation: Understanding customer segments and their price sensitivity is key to avoid pricing dead zones. In this case the price sensitivity seems to be unusually rigid.
    • Perception of value: A key consideration in a dead zone is how customers perceive the value of a product at a specific price point. If a product is priced too cheap, customers can assume it’s inferior quality. If a price too high the customers feel they aren’t getting enough value for money. What’s interesting about ramen is that customers aren’t willing to budge on quality or perceived value.
    • Market competition: The presence of competitors with well-positioned prices within a category can create dead zones.  Ramen restaurants tend to be small businesses rather than chains, so they don’t have a lot of market power. They do have competition in terms of substitution for that 1000 Yen note – onigiri, instant noodles and sandwiches from the local combini (convenience store).

    What’s fascinating about this situation is that ramen restaurants or an outsider haven’t managed to innovate around the wall. Instead the poor substitute of a sandwich or onigiri from a refrigerator is their option.

    It’s more than business being lost, ramen restaurants are neighbourhood staples and an intangible part of Japan’s culinary culture. To give a UK specific example, without the humble ramen shop we wouldn’t have had the Wagamama chain of restaurants.

    More Japan related content can be found here.

    More information

    Try the Michelin-star ramen that’s only 1,000 yen in an unassuming location in central Tokyo | Stars and Stripes

    ‘Ramen fast pass’ starves lineups, feeds the busy first at popular Tokyo shop – The Mainichi

    Record number of Japan ramen eateries went bankrupt in 2024 | Kyodo News

    Japan election 2024: How ramen prices have become a top issue for voters – Firstpost

    Japan Runs on Vending Machines. It’s About to Break Millions of Them. – The New York Times

    Japanese ramen shops must raise prices, or shut, to cope with inflation – The Washington Post

    Record Number of Ramen Shops Go Bankrupt in Japan in 2024 – Unseen Japan

    Japan runs on vending machines. It’s about to break millions of them. – The Japan Times

  • Shop OS versus mobile OS

    I decided to write this post to reflect on the very different visions of digital retailing that consumers are currently experiencing. I’ve labelled these two visions mobile OS and Shop OS respectively.

    The Mobile OS

    Qkr!I went to Wagamama with some colleagues from Racepoint where we were encouraged to all download Qkr!. Qkr! is an application that was developed by MasterCard rather than the restaurant, it isn’t exclusive to Wagamama either. MasterCard has built the application with a view to building a wide eco-system merchants. It is notable that the application is actually card issuer agnostic, so I was able to set up an account with a Visa card. Wagamama bribed us with free desserts to download the application, so they clearly have some skin in the game. We downloaded it, set up our account with at least one mode of payment, our email address and a password. One of us became the host and gave us all a number which was our common bill. We could order straight from the app and food was supposed to arrive. When we wanted to pay we selected our items and paid our share of the bill. A couple of us only had cash, so they paid a friend and the friend paid on the app. If I am absolutely honest with you, it was a lot of work for casual dining and but for everyone around the table working in technology marketing (and so having a modicum of curiosity about things app-related) – it probably wouldn’t have had us all on board. Now that we have the app on our phone, I could see Qkr! hoping that we use it regularly and likely try and steer us to its merchant network though notifications and special offers. From Wagamama’s point-of-view it saves them from building, testing and maintaining a bespoke application. There are also presumably productivity benefits from reducing the order taking staff required. Qkr! didn’t prevent Wagamama from making mistakes with our order and we ended up one chocolate cake down. Contrast this with the approach that McDonalds have rolled out in their new (to me) Cambridge Circus branch. The area between the counter and the entrance is dominated by a series of vertical kiosks. Digital McDonalds

    These kiosks contain an identical touch screen interface

    Digital McDonalds

    With a basic card reader on the bottom, there is no Apple Pay or NFC facilities, just a chip and PIN reader. The touch screen menu takes you through a smartphone app like experience, if smartphones came with 27 inch screens. Once payment was successfully received, you then received a deli counter style receipt Digital McDonalds

    And collected from a counter when your number appeared on the screen

    Digital McDonalds

    This is all designed to reduce consumer interaction and improve efficiency in the restaurant, if there was any way to cheapen the McDonalds’ experience making you queue like an Argos seems like the ideal way to go. The logical progression for this would be to move back to the Automat format (presumably this time using some sort of algorithm to optimise production. automat

    The irony of it all is that the rise of fast food restaurants like McDonalds killed off the Automat as a trend in North America and many Automats were converted into Burger King franchises.

    Both Wagamama and McDonalds may have had some efficiency gains but lost out in terms of brand experience, they moved a bit further towards commoditised casual dining and fast food respectively – which goes against the brand equity that they have striven hard to build over decades.

    Shop OS offers some advantages over Mobile OS, you can standardise on the hardware to reduce coding and testing requirements. It is ideal for tourists who may not want to roam on foreign mobile networks, nor be able to navigate free wi-fi offerings. The flip side is that there isn’t the same opportunity to capture customer data and behaviour, the notification screen on the smartphone is a key place for brands to intercept the customer using geofencing.

  • Hells Club + more things

    Hells Club -an amazing film mash-up, spot the different appearances. In the words of the maker

    There is a place where all fictional characters meet. . Outside of time, Outside of all logic, This place is known as HELLS CLUB, But this club is not safe
    TERMINATOR VERSUS TONY MONTANA VERSUS TOM CRUISE VERSUS CARLITO BRIGANTE VERSUS BLADE VERSUS JOHN TRAVOLTA VERSUS AL PACINO VERSUS PINEAD VERSUS THE MASK VERSUS ROBOCOP VERSUS DARTH VADER VERSUS MICHAEL JACKSON.

    The film editing that went into Hells Club is impressive.

    Colin Faver, one of the first pioneers of house and techno in the UK died on September 5. Faver who co-founded Kiss FM and played all the big seminal nights in London and beyond even merited his own obituary in The Telegraph – I am sure that the irony of this wouldn’t have been lost on him. Mr C did a great tribute mix to Faver highlighting some of the tracks that he had championed, with a particular focus on his house music legacy. The mix is 3 hours and 3 minutes in length (3:03) a nod to the Roland TB-303 that is responsible for the ‘acid’ sound. Listen to it and spare Colin a thought.

    Ok the next two things that I want to share with you are a bit weird (but not in an NSFW way) so sit down and buckle up. And before you wonder about my internet habits these where shared with my by colleague Jenn Russell who worked on video stuff with me and is based out of Hong Kong.

    Southern Comfort have put a couple of ad spots on their YouTube channel. These spots feature a campaign message ‘SHOTTA SoCo’ which I guess is what some aging advertising copywriters thought was how young people would say a shot of Southern Comfort (presumably for their Bourbon whiskey and Coke).

    The video looks as if it has been made by Next Media Animation (out of Taiwan) or some similar high throughput CGI shop. I think that I can see the reason for this; NMA videos are quite popular online, it looks a bit like machinima (which young people love because they are on their consoles all the time).

    Ok, so far so good? These videos wouldn’t have been that expensive since they are all pre-existing models so maybe $20,000 a pop spend with NMA. There are a couple more including one that warns about the perils of drink driving.

    SHOTTASoCo seems to be something that Southern Comfort are doubling down on, but they don’t seem to have spent any money on advertising to promote the videos and get them views. The NMA style videos have garnered between 3,000 – 13,000 views – so somewhere on the bell curve of viewership that I have seen on other consumer accounts I have worked on. Southern Comfort also invested in (presumably more expensive) SHOTTASoCo videos by American producers Funny Or Die – none of which have over 600 views – weird or what? And why aren’t spending on paid to amplify campaigns like this? More marketing related content here

    Dark ambient veterans Autechre have put together a four hour mix that is like a history of electronica (taking in Kraftwerk, electro, freestyle, post disco, house and back again) for the Dekmantel podcast series. It is well worth a listen to cleanse the audio palette after Disclosure et al.

    Bonus mention, a dinner at Wagamama Hammersmith (in a converted fire station) with some of my former Racepoint colleagues.
    Dinner with former Racepoint colleagues
    More on this trip out from a digital point-of-view on a later post.

  • The PowerBook

    PR Week (subscription required) published the PowerBook this week, featuring 500 of the most prominent people in PR, it had a selection of questions that painted an interesting portrait of the people listed. BlackBerry’s at the ready, with leisure time facilitated by iPods and TiVo-equipped home entertainment systems, they are used to dining in London’s best restaurants – there wasn’t too many surprises amongst the preferences of the 500.

    It also struck me that the same questions could paint an interesting picture of the digital marketing blogosphere. What would my own responses look like?

    Name: Ged Carroll

    Job: Lead consultant (EMEA), Digital Strategies Group

    Address: Waggener Edstrom Worldwide 10 Southampton Street London WC2E 7HA

    Telephone: +44 20 7632 3800

    Born: 19XX

    Home town: That’s a complex question. The place I felt most at home is Hong Kong. I grew up in the north west of England and the ancestral family farm in the west of Ireland. For better or worse, London is where currently where I call home.

    Lives: London

    Family: No

    Best career move: Getting made redundant from my blue-collar job in the oil industry, which set me on my current career path. Little did I know what that would entail.

    Which company / brand do you most admire? Rolex

    Which business / organisation leader do you most admire? Larry Weber – who was the first agency leader that I worked for. It also reminded me that its disappointing to meet your heroes. He is a lovely, but far from perfect character.

    Boss who most inspired you: Cathy Pittham, who was the managing director of the first agency I worked for down in London.

    Most essential read: Wired magazine

    Most essential viewing / listening: Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing podcast

    Favourite web link: pbs.org/cringely

    Favourite gadget: Apple MacBook Pro

    Most respected journalist: Robert X. Cringely (aka Mark Stephens)
    Most respected politician: A toss up between former president Mary Robinson, Moshe Dayan and Michael Collins (and yes I do know the last two are dead).

    What is your favourite place for lunch? Wagamama

    Name one thing about yourself that may surprise others: I used to be a shift leader in an oil refinery

    Guilty pleasure: too many to mention including vinyl records, streetwear and mechanical watches

    Your ideal epitaph: to not have an epitaph, at least not for a good while.

  • Four Things

    Drew B has linked to me in a meme called 4 things. In this people who have been linked to name a number of different items in groups of four and then link to four other blogs that they know of that could continue this one.In typical Wired reader style, this concept of an idea that can be communicated is called a meme (and memes are often written about in digerati circles).

    Classic memes that non-geeks would have heard of include the ‘Frankie Says’ series of t-shirts and ‘No, but Yeah’, but No dialogue from Little Britain.

    Why 4?

    Three or six are the perfect numbers according to a discussion between Lee van Cleef and Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Wikipedia couldn’t shed any light on it either.

    Four jobs I’ve had

    Agency drone – at present
    Shift leader
    – heading up a shift team on the bitumen plant in what was then UK’s second smallest oil refinery
    DJ
    – up north, and a few times in London
    On the line
    – in a meat packing plant and various other factories as a student

    Four movies I can watch over and over

    All the Presidents Men

    The Dollars Trilogy (particularly For a Few Dollars More)

    The Usual Suspects

    Silmido

    Four TV shows I love to watch

    I don’t have a television but I do have a soft spot for vintage shows, here’s four that came to mind:

    Four places I’ve visited on holiday

    • Dublin
    • Leiden
    • Ibiza
    • Paris

    Four favourite dishes

    • As my mate Griff would say ‘a big bowl of fuck-off’ (a ramen noodle dish from Wagamamas)
    • A decent Irish fried breakfrast with proper black and white pudding and a side serving of soda bread
    • Rhubarb crumble
    • A well done tuna steak

    Four places I’ve lived

    • Liverpool
    • Galway
    • London
    • Huddersfield

    4 sites I visit daily

    It would actually be a hell of a lot more than this but: Slate.com, Wired.com, RTE.ie and ThinkSecret.com

    Four places I’d rather be

    Singapore, in a coffee shop, record shopping, sat in front of a range enjoying a turf fire