Olympics delay and coronavirus are a one-two punch to Tokyo restaurants
that the economic damage already surpasses the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
While some restaurants have successfully pivoted to delivery, take-out culture is not as well established in Tokyo as one might think. While grab-and-go food options abound, there is still a strong emphasis on traditional family meals cooked at home, and many locals live in small apartments where they don’t want to deal with excess trash from deliveries.
For restaurants whose business model relied primarily on tourists, or the incoming wave of tourists for the Olympics, delivery wasn’t much of an option anyway. Bocata is a 12-seat Spanish bocadillo restaurant in Tokyo’s Yutenji neighborhood. Owner Takahiro Katsumura was hoping to draw Spanish nationals looking for a taste of home during the Olympics, but the emergency declaration saw his weekend sales decline by 50 percent, and he was eventually forced to close altogether, at least for now.
, and many operators made huge investments in expectation of an Olympics influx, costs they now have to absorb. Toki Okumura owns Shinbu Sakiya, a ramen restaurant in the tourist-heavy Shibuya area of Tokyo, not far from the famously swarmed pedestrian crossing. Okumura-san expected the Olympics to bring record-breaking revenue, projecting a 135 percent increase in business in July and August alone.
But the damage had been done. In preparation for the Olympics, Okumura-san revamped his menu with foreigners in mind, advertising vegan, gluten-free ramen, and “non-pork” ramen options, and cranking up social media marketing to attract non-Japanese diners. He also bought a snazzy touch-screen ticket machine with six different languages.
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