Deciding now what you will have on your plate in 30 years? That is what the customers of a Japanese butcher shop in the city of Takasago in the south of the country have to do. Because if you place your order here, you have to bring 30 years of patience until it finally runs out.
The reason for these extreme waiting times is the coveted beef croquettes sold at this butcher shop called “Asahiya”. These contain the otherwise insanely expensive Kobe beef delicacy. Up to 1,000 francs per kilo can be charged for the “caviar of steaks”. At Asahiya, however, a so-called “Extreme Croquette” only costs the equivalent of 1.70 francs each. How is that possible?
Croquettes with Kobe beef deli meat
The croquettes, for which the butcher shop is now an internet celebrity, are not actually the main activity of the company founded in 1926 – but the famous Kobe meat itself. “In 1999, we started selling our products over the Internet,” current owner Shigeru Nitta, 58, told CNN. The butcher is the third generation to run the family business. After a few years of online trading, Nitta noticed that potential customers were reluctant to pay a large sum for beef.
To promote his meat products, he decided to sell the beef in croquettes. He hoped that after a first taste of the meat, customers would also be interested in his Kobe beef. “We started selling Extreme Croquettes for 270 yen each,” he told CNN. The butcher started with a production of 200 croquettes per month.
But the idea had a catch: the price of the equivalent of 1.70 Swiss francs is nowhere near the cost of production. “The beef alone costs about 400 yen each,” says Nitta. The quality is also significantly higher than the price suggests. The Extreme Croquettes are prepared daily fresh and without preservatives. Ingredients include grade A5 three-year-old female Kobe beef and potatoes sourced from a local farm.
“If I keep expanding, I will go bankrupt”
Nitta’s loss-making venture, which was actually only planned on a small scale and for promotion, quickly attracted the attention of the local population and the media. More and more people wanted to try the famous croquettes. The butcher increased production to 200 croquettes a day and also put them into circulation frozen.
But for Nitta it was not worth it to further expand sales – after all, he was making a loss with the company. “We keep hearing that we need to hire more people and make the croquettes faster. But I don’t think there is a shopkeeper who hires staff and produces more to make a bigger deficit,” says the butcher boss. “I’m sorry you have to wait. I want to make croquettes quickly and ship them as soon as possible, but if I do, the store will go bankrupt,” he explains his predicament.
Despite this, he has no plans to stop producing the legendary croquettes, the report said. He wants more people to taste Kobe meat, even if it’s through a shortage. After all, half of the people who try the croquettes also buy Kitta’s Kobe meat afterwards. So the marketing strategy works – albeit differently than planned. (Hi)