By freezing soba, we were able to expand our business not only to restaurants but also to wholesale and mail order!

assignment

Must be provided within 3 days after hitting in store

Soba production during the busy season was not completed in time.

Background of considering the introduction of rapid freezer

I wanted to expand my business beyond restaurants.

Originally, I only served soba at restaurants, so I was making soba by myself. However, during busy seasons such as New Year's soba season, it is difficult to make soba in time. This is the reason why I started thinking about installing rapid freezer.

As I learned more about rapid freezing, I began to think that if we could freeze soba with the same quality as fresh soba, we could expand our business beyond restaurants, such as wholesale and mail order. became.

However, even when frozen using other rapid freezer such as blast chillers, we were unable to produce products with acceptable quality. Ishihara's raw soba, which uses almost no binder, will deteriorate in quality if frozen. So I was looking for a better way.

At that time, I learned about Daybreak through an acquaintance. After hearing an explanation about Daybreak's special, high-quality rapid freezer, I immediately booked a freezing test, thinking it would be a good option.

At the showroom, we received explanations about multiple rapid freezer, took into account the installation location, and tested the freezer we felt was the most suitable. We decided to install a machine because we were able to produce soba noodles that were of the same quality as unfrozen soba noodles, unlike the previous ones.

Effects after introducing rapid freezer

We were able to increase the number of restaurants and create new businesses such as wholesale and mail order!

We increased the number of restaurants to four and were able to expand our sales channels beyond restaurants. It's been just over a year since we installed rapid freezer, and we are now selling rapid freezing soba to four other businesses in addition to our own restaurants.

Currently, we are not doing any advertising or sales activities, so our monthly sales are around 200,000 yen. From now on, we would like to approach various companies in earnest and expand our business so that we can achieve our sales target in a year's time.

We have also started selling Ishihara soba on the Internet so that general consumers can easily enjoy Ishihara soba. We hope to grow this mail order business as well.

Since soba noodles for restaurants can also be used as stock, there is an overwhelming reduction in waste!

Product loss has been dramatically reduced. Basically, soba can only be stored for two or three days. However, if rapid freezing it, it can be stored for several months.

The restaurant only serves soba noodles that are not frozen. If there are few customers due to weather or other factors, there will be a lot of soba left over that cannot be consumed.

Until now, this leftover soba was wasted. However, now you can rapid freezing and use it as stock for wholesale and mail order, so you don't have to worry about loss. Now I no longer waste about 1.5 million yen a year on soba noodles.

Customer feedback

We hear from local people that they are happy.

Up until now, we had only been open as a restaurant, so there was no other way to enjoy Ishihara's soba than by coming directly to the restaurant.

However, since we rapid freezing and started selling it online, we have received feedback from our original customers who have traveled to rural areas that they are happy to be able to eat it there.

I feel it's a good thing to be able to deliver the taste of Ishihara to customers wherever they are.

Future outlook

We would like to focus on wholesale and mail order and further expand our business!

Up to this point, we have been able to create the foundation for proceeding with our wholesale and mail order business.

Therefore, in the future, we would like to focus on not only restaurants but also wholesale and mail order businesses. We are thinking of approaching restaurants and other businesses immediately to increase the number of wholesale contracts.

There has also been talk of opening a store as a franchise, so I would like to try that.