Monogatari Corporation President and CEO Takayuki Kato

Envisioning the person you want to be is the beginning of enriching your life.

President and CEO of Monogatari Corporation　Hiroyuki Kato(Kato Hisayuki)

■ Profile
Born in Aichi Prefecture in 1986. After graduating from Kanagawa University, he joined Monogatari Corporation as a new graduate. After working in a store, he served as the Okonomiyaki Business Division Manager, Business Development Division Manager, and Vice President before becoming Representative Director and President in September 2020. He is in charge of promoting the company's management philosophy, sustainability, and marketing.

Monogatari Corporation has achieved success in many business categories, including Yakiniku King, Marugen Ramen, and Sushi & Shabu-Shabu Yuzuan. The company has over 700 stores both in Japan and overseas. We spoke with Takayuki Kato, CEO of Monogatari Corporation, about his student days, the strengths of Monogatari Corporation, and his message to university students.

What made me start thinking seriously about my future was a job interview. I was asked, "What kind of person do you want to be?" and I couldn't answer. The night after the interview, I went to a family restaurant and for the first time seriously thought about the kind of future I wanted to be. After thinking about it for days, I realized that I didn't want to become an uncool adult, in other words, I wanted to be a "cool adult."
After that, I broke down what constitutes a "cool adult" and thought about my role model, and I came up with the manager of the udon restaurant where I worked part-time during high school. There are two main reasons why I thought he was cool. The first was his interpersonal skills. He always spoke his mind to everyone and acted on it, and he seemed to have a strong core and be very lively. The second was his professionalism. He was running his own udon restaurant on his own, and I was attracted to his sincere attitude towards his work.
The company he worked for before going independent was Monogatari Corporation. When I attended a job fair and learned about the company's management philosophy, "Smile & Sexy," I thought it was cool that he continued to live by this philosophy even after going independent. Ultimately, I decided to join the company because I thought I could hone my interpersonal skills and professionalism and become a cool, strong-willed adult.
When I first joined the company, I actually thought I'd learn here for about 10 years before going independent, but now I'm the company president. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I can take on a more professional challenge. Naturally, it's much more difficult to make one store thrive without aiming for multiple locations than it is to make the first store thrive in a chain that aims to open 100 locations. With one store, you might be able to succeed by hiring a skilled chef or by conducting field research to locate a store in an area lacking supply. However, with 100 stores, you have to think about how to differentiate each store. In terms of which challenge I wanted to take on as a food business professional, I chose to work at Monogatari Corporation over going independent. The second reason is simply because I enjoy working with everyone. My coworkers are incredibly important to me, and they're warm and caring. I wanted to continue working with them, so I chose Monogatari Corporation over going independent.

■ Philosophy and human resources are our strengths

Monogatari Corporation's strengths lie in its philosophy and human resources. The restaurant industry is already a mature market, making it extremely difficult to create clear differentiation. This is why we must accumulate small differentiations. For example, it is important to put into practice even small things, such as reviewing prices by improving the quality of customer service and procurement routes, in order to become a restaurant that customers choose. And ultimately, it is people who create these small differentiations.
The definition of the person we are referring to here is expressed in our company's management philosophy, "Smile & Sexy." Sexy means expressing your thoughts and what you want to do openly and honestly, without hesitation, to anyone. However, no matter how proactively you express yourself, if you are a nasty person, you will not get the cooperation of those around you and it will be difficult to achieve what you want. On the other hand, Smile means honing your human qualities, symbolized by a smile, and becoming someone who is supported. Our company is filled with talented people who share our philosophy of striving to be people who combine the attitude of self-expression (Sexy) with the human qualities (Smile) that are supported.
Furthermore, we have implemented various measures within the company to support this philosophy and the self-realization of each employee. For example, we refer to employees as management candidates rather than new employees, and as career employees rather than mid-career employees, in order to create an environment where employees feel more comfortable speaking up. We also have a system called the "Anything Proposal Executive Committee" that meets once a month to gather opinions from stores, regardless of their size, such as proposals for new menu items, ideas for improving operations, or opinions on the personnel system. The opinions raised here are carefully examined by management to decide whether or not to implement them, and even if some are not implemented, we respond to them with an explanation.
It is precisely because we have so many people who share our philosophy and have the desire to express themselves that discussions are born and deepened through the many different opinions we receive, and we believe that our company can remain a restaurant that customers choose to eat at, regardless of the type of business it serves, such as yakiniku or ramen.

■ Future outlook

As our outlook for the future, we have set out three pillars of growth strategies.
The first is to create a brand that customers choose (No. 1 strategy). The domestic market has already matured and will shrink in the future. That is why we must become a store that customers choose and increase our market share. To achieve this, we will continue to make small differentiations.
The second is the development of new business formats to accelerate growth. Generally, I believe that food business companies grow when they create a hit format. The first hit format is sometimes born from an inspiration that cannot be reproduced, so we would like to use this success factor as our own knowledge and expand it to other brands. New business formats cannot be developed immediately, so we need to work on developing new business formats while we still have successful brands and start creating an engine for future growth now. Incidentally, we hope that Yakitate Karubi, which first opened three years ago, will become a future growth driver.
The third is accelerating the expansion of our overseas business. Japan's population is declining, but the world's population continues to grow. For example, the average age in Indonesia is 29, and the population is also continuing to grow. We believe it is important to be in a market like this that will continue to grow in the future. We also want to expand into North America and Southeast Asian countries.

■Message to university students

You only have one life, so live it the way you want. If you assume that out of the 24 hours in a day, 8 hours are for sleep, 8 hours for personal use, and 8 hours for work, many people try to enrich their personal lives. On the other hand, many people think of work as a means to earn money and as a time to endure. However, if you can enjoy your work, you can enjoy life twice as much.
To achieve this, it's important to have your own opinion on everything. What do you think is good? What would you do? Think about these things and be brave enough to express them. Make things your own and pursue the results you're aiming for. The sense of fulfillment that comes from living life your own way will enrich your life and lead to something you're proud of.

Interviewed by Student Newspaper Online on June 25, 2024 by Yusuke Suzuki, a fourth-year student at Hosei University

Yusuke Suzuki, fourth-year student at Hosei University / Sayori Yamamoto, third-year student at Keio University