Japan's restaurant industry is experiencing the biggest closure wave in 10 years, with 650 restaurants closing in the first nine months of this year, a 16.5% year-on-year increase.
Izakaya restaurants, which have been favored by customers for a long time, accounted for the largest number of closures, totaling 160, followed by ramen stores, Western-style restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and Japanese-style restaurants. Tokyo and Osaka alone accounted for 29.8% of the total number of closed stores. Based on this estimate, the number of restaurant closures in Japan could reach about 870 this year, even exceeding the 780 closures in 2020, when COVID-19 was at its peak.
The increasing number of Izakaya closures is mainly due to a shift in customer demand from large-scale banquets to small-scale dinners. In the past, employees of large companies went to Izakaya after work to continue socializing, but this traditional workplace culture began to fade after the epidemic. In addition, with rising prices in Japan, consumers are tightening their spending, and the frequency of customers coming to Izakaya and the unit price of the food they spend have both declined.
Moreover, in terms of costs, the high purchase price of food and alcohol, the increasingly serious problem of manpower shortage has led to difficulties in recruiting workers, the store's daily expenses such as electricity, gas and other costs, land rent and other burdens are also increasing, and ultimately led to the continuous deterioration of the operating environment of the Izakaya.
Japan's Tokyo SHOKO Research earlier data show that in October this year, Japan's national number of bankruptcies reached 909, an increase of 14.6% over last year, is since 2013, the number of bankruptcies in October for the first time exceeded 900 companies. In addition, from January to October this year, the total number of bankruptcies in Japan was 8,323, an increase of 17.6% over the same period last year. Analysts say that with the depreciation of the Japanese yen and rising raw material prices, corporate profits are being further squeezed.
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