Before starting the restaurant, I was a salaried employee of a semi-conductor manufacturing company, but I originally started because I loved ramen and thought I only had one shot in life after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The current satisfaction rate of the shop is 80%. It depends on the staff at the time, as the shop cannot be run by one person. There was a time before when it was 90%, but now it is between 60% and 80%.
To improve my skills, I do seasonal menus where I experiment with noodles. For morning ramen, we offer a light soup that is different from the regular menu.
What challenges did you face before installing the soup strainer?
We cook pork bone and chicken white soup once every two days. It takes two hours to strain and clean up the soup, so it was a physical challenge. Especially in the summer, I often got heat stroke from the filtering work.
Now it takes half an hour just to strain the water. It takes one hour to clean up, which is half the time.
Introduced the ‘Rich Soup’ soup straining machine.
The straining process is now easier and can be left to the staff.
Were there any innovations or difficulties in the process from consideration to introduction?
There was a shortage of manpower and we thought that by introducing a strainer we would be able to do it with a smaller number of staff. There were no particular difficulties because we were able to make adjustments when the machine was on loan prior to installation.
We were not sure about the size of the holes in the mesh skid, but we were glad we chose the coarser one.
As the pork bones are made from the back bone, they do not get stuck in the scraper and can be used without stopping until the end of the process.
Have there been any changes before and after the introduction of the system?
The straining process has become much easier and we have been able to reduce the number of staff when we are straining soup. Now we leave the soup straining work to our staff.
Also, when we were doing it by hand, the soup consistency sometimes became thin, but since we started using the strainer, the consistency has stabilised and it is no longer thin, which is good.
What are your dreams for the future?
As long as I am strong enough, I would like to continue as a locally based shop for a long time.
Finally – what kind of presence do you have with Yamato?
I went to the Yamato Ramen School, I use Yamato’s noodle-making machines and I trust them. If it wasn’t for Yamato, I wouldn’t have been able to continue running my ramen shop.
