GoGo Curry accelerates overseas expansion, opening 11th store in Indonesia
Go! Go! Curry Group Co., Ltd. (Head office: Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, CEO and President: Makoto Nishihata, hereinafter "Go! Go! Curry") opened a new store in South Tangerang City, Bandung Province, on the outskirts of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, on April 5th. The company announced the opening of its 11th store in Japan.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, food internationalization has progressed in Asia, especially among young people, and healthy and delicious Japanese food is becoming more popular. After restrictions were lifted, economic activity resumed and demand for Japanese food, which was already popular, has recovered, leading to many Japanese companies reactivating their previously suspended overseas expansion. In 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced that there were 187,000 Japanese restaurants overseas worldwide, an increase of approximately 20% from the previous survey in 2021 and more than triple the 55,000 restaurants ten years ago. In Southeast Asian countries, the number of Japanese restaurants has increased to 4,000 in Indonesia, 5,330 in Thailand, and 1,890 in Malaysia (※1).
GoGo Curry first entered Indonesia in 2013 but closed within a year, then re-opened its first store at Living World Alam Sutera, a shopping mall in the southern suburbs of Jakarta, in December 2022. After that, in 2023, it opened six stores in Jakarta, Surabaya, East Java, and Denpasar, Bali, and in 2024, it opened four stores in Bandung and around Jakarta.
Go! Go! Curry, which revamped its management structure last year, has fully launched its global strategy, currently operating eight stores in the United States and eleven stores in Indonesia. Japanese katsu curry has been popular in the UK for several years, with Japanese curry being chosen as the world's number one traditional dish, and it is spreading as a representative Japanese dish in Europe and Asia as well (※2).
Tomoya Tanaka, General Manager of the Overseas Business Division of Go! Go! Curry, said, "We are seeing positive demand in Indonesia and are accelerating our store openings. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world (approximately 277.5 million people*3), with roughly 50% of the population being under 30 years old. Approximately 90% of the population is Muslim, so they cannot eat pork.
"We're developing products with the same flavor as the GoGo Curry we serve in Japan, while localizing it to suit the changing market, so it's popular with a wide range of customers. We want to work with local partner companies to develop the market and lead the Kanazawa Curry boom in Indonesia," he said.
Go! Go! Curry also exhibited at Japan Expo, a Japanese culture festival held in France last year, and FOODEX JAPAN, Asia's largest food exhibition, held in March. Tanaka said, "In order to expand overseas, we are increasing brand awareness by exhibiting at events, while also conducting market research and looking for strong local partners." Go! Go! Curry will exhibit at FOBEX, a trade fair for commercial food to be held at Tokyo Big Sight in April, and plans to actively participate in food-related events overseas in the future.
[Reference] GoGo Curry Group overseas stores https://www.gogocurry.com/shop/index.html
*1 Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries "Survey results on the number of Japanese restaurants overseas" (2023)
https://www.maff.go.jp/j/press/yusyutu_kokusai/kikaku/231013_12.html
*2 Source: TasteAtlas "Best Dishes of the World in 2022"
https://twitter.com/TasteAtlas/status/1606269629571035136
*3 Source: United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) "World Population White Paper 2023"
https://tokyo.unfpa.org/ja/SWOP
[GoGoCurry Group Co., Ltd.]
Founded in 2003, the first store opened in Shinjuku, Tokyo in 2004, sparking the "Kanazawa curry boom."
In 2007, the Go! Go! Curry Group opened its first store overseas in Times Square, New York. Since 2017, the group has been focusing on business succession-type M&A, taking over the management of Kanazawa's long-established Indian curry restaurant "Hot House" and in 2019, the original Kanazawa curry restaurant "Turban Curry". In January 2023, the company moved its headquarters from Tokyo to Kanazawa, and in March, Nishihata Makoto, who came from a major IT company, was appointed CEO and President. The Go! Go! Curry Group aims to be the "world's number one curry specialty trading company," and has about 100 stores in Japan and overseas.
List of press releases from GoGoCurry Group Co., Ltd.
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/searchrlp/company_id/75866
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