Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2014
Having gradually built up up popularity in the US over several decades, Tex-Mex food is taking Japan by storm, and may finally be here to stay. Part of the drive is from Frijoles, a chain that already has four shops across Tokyo.
Frijoles (“beans” in Spanish) is the brainchild of Chiba native Hiroshi “Roy” Miyano. A self-described ‘misfit’ in Japan’s education system, he dropped out of high school in his freshman year. His concerned parents sent him to the San Francisco bay area to be looked after by friends.
He finished secondary schooling in the US and picked up enough English to start his own business. By 2001, he was selling snacks to Japanese ex-pats in California. “Japanese are huge fans of amaguri (roasted chestnuts),” he says. “It’s a good cash-and-carry business, but washing all those dirty nuts was really hard work!”.
This efforts paid off, and a year and a half Nature’s Chestnuts had grown to 15 locations with $2 million in revenue. But tougher immigration rules in the wake of 9/11 made staying in the US difficult. Miyano returned to Japan to work as a restaurant manager for Tully’s Coffee, where learned the ins and outs of running a business in Japan..
Miyano then struck out on his own, using his favorite restaurant in the US, Chipotle Mexican Grill, as his model. “It didn’t seem like any corporate Tex-Mex outfits were interested in setting up in Japan,” he recalls today. “So I thought there might be a chance for me.”
Indeed, Tex-Mex has had difficulty taking root in Japan. Taco Bell, which serves more than 2 billion customers a year globally, shuttered its last location in Nagoya location in the late ‘80s and never looked back.
Frijoles, as a much smaller corporate entity, has had more success. As CEO, Miyano overseas operations at four locations, where rock-and-roll music and an English-speaking staff to boost the cheerful atmosphere.
But Miyano has had his setbacks. The Lehman shock of 2009 wreaked havoc on the global economy, but since then sales have risen 3% to 5% each year. Then came the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima Dai-chi nuclear meltdown, which drove scores of Tex-Mex loving foreigners from Japan permanently. But Miyano’s business was not significantly impacted. Nor has the plummeting yen had much of an effect, since Miyano buys most of his ingredients from local farmers.
Miyano has his eye on 10 locations in the Tokyo area by 2018 while relying on word of mouth to build his business. “It’s tough to make people like new things,” he says. “ Hopefully, by offering great food, good service, we can change some appetites, and let people do our talking for us.”
