Fujio: I've talked about Maido-okini Shokudo before. TSURUMARUUDON was officially born after Maido-okini Shokudo. It has something to do with my roots. My parents ran a restaurant from when I was a child until after I grew up. This is the origin of Maido-okini Shokudo, which I will explain later. From when I was a child, my parents worked at the udon restaurant they ran from morning until late at night. Watching their backs, I keenly realized, even as a child, that “my parents' work is hard”. My parents always served udon and side dishes that went well with udon. At the time, my father was making udon noodles by hand in the restaurant, so I, who was helping out at the shop as a part-time worker, suggested to my father that we could make more if we used a machine. However, my father was strongly opposed, saying, “What if we introduce such an expensive machine and the udon chefs quit? I managed to persuade my father and introduced the machine, but what actually happened was just as my father had feared. The chefs quit the shop. In response to this, I had a sense of responsibility and determination, and I started making noodles using the machine, and it was a big hit. At the time, the shop was called ‘Marutoya’, and it has been over 40 years since it’s establishment in 1984.

Fujio: I researched trademark registration in the belief that I could expand the chain, but a company in a different industry had already registered the trademark “Maruten”. One day, I was visiting Kagoshima with the president of Sapporo Breweries Limited, who was supporting us at the time, and when I was passing by Kagoshima Prefectural Tsurumaru High School in a taxi, I was very impressed by the name “TSURUMARU”. The word “TSURU” reminded me of the smooth texture of Osaka-style Sanuki udon, and it also contained the “MARU” from the origin of MARUTEN. I thought, “What a great wordplay!”, so I called an expert from the taxi to check, and found out that it could be registered as a trademark, so I decided to go ahead with the name. Maido-okini Shokudo is a restaurant that I opened again after seeing my mother depressed when my father passed away. After that, I started Tsurumaru Udon as a separate business from the udon restaurant.

Fujio: The key to our success is that we use a lot of Japanese soup stock, which is also recognized overseas, and we have achieved a high quality product at an affordable price. In addition, we can serve our customers more quickly thanks to our self-service system. Both we and our partner company also place great importance on the “experience of our customers through food”. The strengths of our partner in the Philippines are their typical good location strategy and education. This is very important in terms of providing licenses and whether or not business performance will grow. The representative of the Philippine company, which is a multi-mega franchisee, came to Japan and sampled noodles from various chains, and ultimately decided on TSURUMARUUDON. The reason is simple: they said “ it was the best“. This partner plans to continue to increase the number of restaurnts in the Philippines.

Fujio: We always think that “delicious food is something that people all over the world will enjoy”. We haven't always been successful, but we hope to continue to grow and make efforts so that people from various countries will be able to enjoy our food. When I went to see Northern Lights, I was shocked to find a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. I was really encouraged by the fact that a chain restaurant like this exists in such a remote area and is able to make customers happy. You can enjoy a variety of in-store-cooked tempura, fried foods, rice balls and other side dishes on top of the udon. I am confident that TSURUMARUUDON will be well accepted everywhere. In addition, we use the original udon homemade noodle machine, our unique flour blends, process control and an advanced flash freezing technology that is the origin of Fuji Food System to provide customers with the best possible taste. Even if you take it away, the taste will not deteriorate. We want to continue to move forward with the aim of conquering the world. It’s means Europe, such as Italy, which has a wheat culture, the franchise kingdom of the United States, and the Asian countries, which will continue to grow in population, as well as Africa, which holds unknown potential.