TOKYO — Wendy’s Co. is adding goose-liver pate and truffles to burgers as it invests as much as $200 million on a return to Japan two years after leaving the country.
The Japan Premium sandwich sells for 1,280 yen ($16) at Wendy’s in Tokyo’s Omotesando luxury shopping district, the first of 100 targeted shops. “We think the fast-food market here is ready for something different,” Ernest Higa, chief executive officer of Wendy’s Japan, said in an interview at the restaurant’s opening Tuesday.
The third-biggest U.S. fast-food chain is returning to Japan under a plan to expand outside the U.S., where it got 92 percent of revenue in 2010, after posting losses in six of the past eight quarters. The Dublin, Ohio-based chain first is focusing on the world’s second-biggest fast-food market as it looks for operating partners in China and Brazil.
“Japan is the most important of the three to me, because we are actually selling burgers here today,” Darrell Van Ligten, international division president, said in an interview in Omotesando. The company expects to eventually expand to about 700 restaurants in Japan, compared with about 3,300 for McDonald’s Corp.’s local unit, the nation’s biggest fast-food burger chain.
Wendy’s ended a 30-year run in Japan in 2009 after its partner Zensho Holdings Co. declined to renew the agreement, saying it would focus on building its main Sukiya chain of beef-bowl restaurants.
“Our partner had a pretty significant business which was their primary focus,” Van Ligten said. “Given the size of the different businesses, Wendy’s wasn’t as much of a focus area as we would have liked it to be.”
In coming back to Japan, the burger chain is counting on its premium menu to lure customers in a “very, very competitive” environment, Higa said.
“This is an aging society which has more single people who just want a meal fast, but restaurants are too expensive so fast food is the correct sector to be in,” said Kyoichiro Shigemura, a Tokyo-based senior analyst at Nomura Holdings.
Wendy’s menu pits it against Japanese rivals including Mos Food Services Inc.’s Mos Burger and Lotteria Co., which has a 1,800 yen ($23) Matsuzaka beef burger, for premium items, Shigemura said. “The competition is really stiff,” he said.
Wendy’s Japan is a joint venture between Wendy’s Co., which owns 49 percent, and closely held Higa Industries Co., with 51 percent.
Wendy’s intends to triple the number of restaurants outside the U.S. to about 1,000, CEO Emil Brolick said on a conference call last month, without giving a time frame.
I’ll stick to the $1 menu. I’ll take a McDouble and a McChicken please. :-)
This is despicable. How is there no mention in this article about the horrific cruelty used to produce the goose livers (foie gras)? I’m not vegetarian but I’m also not into a food that requires an animal to literally be tortured alive to make.
I am not a veggie either but I will not eat at any of those restaurants. The food is filthy with grease and soy based condiments, it tastes bad, it makes you smell like old cooking oil, it upsets your stomach, and it is horribly overpriced. Plus they pay their employee’s poverty wages of servitude. Stay away from these purveyors of crap (I cannot call them restaurants!). I am shocked at the number of people that regularly eat at these places.
Oh, don’t fool yourself about how animals are treated. I’ve seen animals caged without room to turn around or stand up. I’ve also seen animals living in a foot of mud and feces with their food thrown on top for them to eat (buying local cause you think it’s healthy? Check the conditions first.) Remember the recent issue with how our eggs are produced? This is not to say that all animals are treated that way. Only that the goose liver situation isn’t the only inhumane act that goes on. By the way, goose liver raised for high priced French foie gras is probably raised much differently than the liver they use at McDonalds. I mean, really, think about it. Such liver would cost WAY too much for a fast food chain.
You are right on the mark.
That fancy burger place in Japan aint nuthin.
J C Penneys in Bangor has a pair of jeans for $204.
If they bring it to Maine I would try it. I love foie gras anybody who has not tried it should. Those who do not like how it is made may want to look at how exactly how there beef, chicken, pork and so on are raised. Big farmed animals are treated as bad if not worse then the geese are. In reality they are simply force fed with a tube. My pork, beef, and chickens are all raised within 10 miles of my home. I know the family who raises them and I buy them they raise and care for them. I get eggs and milk from them as well. Where does YOUR meat come from that you so disagree with geese are treated?
Local does not guarantee that an animal was raised humanely or in a healthy environment. Though you do have the opportunity to view how they are raised, you must also have knowledge of what is healthy and what is not to make the decision. This goes for the raw milk issue being discussed elsewhere too.
??????? how did this article make it into the Bangor daily News???????
Just one word here….YUCK!!!!
Fast food is addictive and unhealthy. It should be classified as a Class C substance and outlawed for minors. Any person found feeding this stuff to a kid ought to be charged with reckless endangerment of a child! While we’re at it, tax it like cigarettes and booze and at the same high rate. Both for the revenue and to dissuade use of the product. Oh, and lets hold these companies responsible for all the dang trash that ends up on our roads because of their customers.