Future of Restaurants 112: Benefits of the New One-Person Restaurant ③ - Businesses with Low Cost of Goods Sold

This is a 10-part series that unravels the mystery of ramen shops, fish specialty shops, and hometown cuisine restaurants that continue to thrive with just a business owner and occasional part-time worker—a new type of one-person restaurant that has stripped away all the burdens that are increasingly weighing down the restaurant industry.

Why one-person restaurants have a low food cost ratio

■ In small, independent, one-person operations, which are primarily run by the owner alone,

○ The store is small and has few seats (often fewer than 20 seats). Because it is easy to forecast the amount of preparation needed based on the day of the week, weather, and past performance, food waste can be minimized.


○ There are few menu items because there is no extra staff Because there are few menu items, they can be developed as original, differentiated offerings. In the case of three items, if two are regular menu items and one is a weekly special, you do not need a large number of menu items. (e.g., ramen shops)

○ Less impact from price hikes because fewer types of ingredients are needed
If you only need 10% to 15% of the types of ingredients used by medium to large restaurants, the rate of food cost inflation for your shop will naturally be lower. This is a benefit.

○ Sales are not particularly high (approximately 1 million yen in monthly sales). Since the sales volume is not enough to hire employees, management ability differs depending on the owner's awareness of the cost of goods sold. Precisely because sales are low, they do not—and cannot—waste ingredients.

○ No over-preparation waste because you intentionally create order-stop menus (limited quantity menus)
Unlike large restaurants, there are not many seats, so if the second or third most popular item out of just three menu items sells out, it does not affect the store's popularity at all. If customers want to eat it, they will simply come earlier on their next visit. That is different from large restaurants that cannot easily afford to run out of stock.

■ Because living expenses must be generated from low sales,

○ Simple and repetitive cooking is the standard to increase sales with a small menu

○ General ingredients are the standard rather than high-end ones because you cannot spend money on procurement (unless you have advanced skills)

○ The focus is on dishes that can earn profits with a relatively low food cost ratio
Many one-person restaurants instinctively choose such business types.

Also, there are some shops that are passionate about meat dishes and specialize in them (with a rich selection of wine). This meat restaurant used low-temperature cooking equipment to introduce labor-saving cooking. However, even in this shop, the higher the quality of the ingredients, the smaller the portion, so the food cost ratio was 33% or less.

With these conditions in the background, they are able to reduce the food cost ratio.

So, what kind of business type is good?

Due to the decline in the dining-out population, the aging of dining-out customers, and the soaring prices of dining out, the restaurant industry is now being driven into a corner. If anything, low-price, high-volume businesses are struggling and repeating mutual destruction. (Half perish, and the half with capital survive = the basis of a free economy, which results in the driving force of evolution.)

There are business types that are being re-evaluated against the backdrop of a savings-oriented mindset. For all of these business types, the target food cost ratio is 34% or less.

●Yakitori shops ... There is a strong trend of switching from izakaya usage
●Oden shops ... A small-staff business that allows for pre-preparation. It has become a daily routine due to convenience stores.
●Curry shops ... This also allows for pre-preparation. Selling out menus is also possible.
●Single-item rice bowl shops ... Selling the rice bowl you are most passionate about (medium, large, extra-large)
●Beef udon shops ... Selling only beef udon in the city. Using B or C grade beef cuts, serving a generous amount of delicious meat. (Some shops also add grated ginger)

Businesses where cooking is simple and the serving time is short, or where pre-preparation is possible and serving only requires heating, are suitable for new one-person restaurants.

If you want to know about successful restaurants in the 2025 fiscal year, you can discover many hints by reading this book!

A company that is in the red even with 10 billion yen in annual sales is still a company in the red. A restaurant that can properly turn a profit even with 1 million yen in monthly sales is impressive. This book escorts you through such ways of thinking and mechanism building. The content of the book is guaranteed to be worth more than 200 times the price. Recommended for those opening a business or those having trouble with restaurant management. (Author)

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