Sanpo-yoshi Communication

President's Column] Saizeriya

The other day, I was looking at the financial statements of Saizeriya, a casual Italian food chain, and was surprised. The majority of its sales come from domestic operations, which are not profitable at all, and most of its profits are generated overseas.
Saizeriya made a "declaration not to raise prices" (in Japan) in April of this year. It is surprising that they have decided to keep prices the same in this inflationary age, but in reality, they are making very little profit in Japan. It can be said that they are able to do so because they are making money overseas.

As a side note, the founder of Saizeriya is a senior at my university and majored in the exact same physics department (different department). The company was founded in Ichikawa, Chiba, and has many stores in Chiba Prefecture. I have fond memories of being very helpful at the Kashiwa City store when I was a student. In my hometown of Kurume City, there is now a large shopping mall with1 There is only one store, but you can drink a bottle of sparkling wine and eat a full meal of Italian cuisine for a "What! The price is so cheap that you could drink a bottle of sparkling wine and eat a full meal of Italian cuisine and still say, "What? My personal opinion is, "Why not make it this cheap? I think it's a good idea.

Saizeriya's popular classic dish "Milanese Doria" does not include tax3 0 0 Yen.1Monthly at the store2 5 0 0 They are selling food.
Suppose this is the case...1 割30What would happen if we raised the price by ³,000? If other costs remain the same, the number of stores in Japan would be approximately1 0 0 0 It's a store,30Circle x2500Eating x 12Month x1 0 0 0 Stores ≈ 0.9 billion yen increase in operating income.

The above graph shows the semi-annual34Considering that the profit is only 1 million yen, this is a huge difference. It is obvious that a small price increase for other menu items would result in a large profit improvement.

----- Why don't they raise prices?

How can a senior member of the physics department at our university not understand such a simple thing? Maybe there is a deeper reason. Maybe there are data showing that in the domestic market, even a small increase in price may result in a drop in sales.

I am an amateur in food service, but still, "raising prices" doesn't seem like the best solution.

Yoji Hiraki

Graphs were prepared by Hiraki based on Saizeriya's financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year ending August 2012.