Japan's restaurant chains turn to U.S., China as weak yen bites

Overseas locations will soon outnumber branches back home, Nikkei tally shows

20240513N Japan restaurants 1

Japan's Skylark Holdings will build a chain of 50 shabu-shabu hot-pot restaurants in the U.S. by 2027. (Skylark Group)

HIDEKI SHINOHARA and YUI SATO, Nikkei staff writers

TOKYO -- Overseas eateries now make up a sizable chunk of locations of Japan's major restaurant operators, which have increasingly expanded abroad to offset the weak yen.

The top 10 restaurant companies in Japan by revenue here, excluding McDonald's Holdings Co. (Japan), had about 13,000 locations abroad at the end of fiscal 2023. This translates to 42% of all their locations, up 13 percentage points from the 29% at the end of fiscal 2019. Overseas locations are on track to outnumber Japanese locations within a few years.

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