Japanese beef croquettes are so popular there's a 30-year waitlist
cnn.com
cnn.com
So they have about 6m $$ that will always be in their account so they can kinda invest that, given that the US stock market has returned 6.8% on avg since the 1870s https://themeasureofaplan.com/us-stock-market-returns-1870s-...
They are actually making $1000+ per day at that return if they just invest their 6m, so 450$ loss is actually a 500$+ gain.
But I imagine they use the 6m to expand their business in which case the returns would be higher.
Other Japanese croquette styles use potato and pork, curry rice with beef, or crab and white sauce.
Some are made broad and flat like a schnitzel or crab cake and others are more rounded and oblong.
https://www.google.com/search?q=croquetas+de+ternera&oq=croq...
Once you are reasonably drunk, they will find you. Get ‘em on a soft white roll with mustard. Then, you smash em in the sammich. Irritatingly delicious, if you ask me.
DONT ASK WHAT IS IN THEM.
Normal retail stores do this all the time. Sell something relatively cheap on a small loss to get you through the door and hope to make it up when you buy something else while you are there.
The notoriety also has led to increased orders of other products from customers far away through the internet.
I guess the 30 year waitlist also helps with the marketing. Presumably, almost no one will actually wait that long.
Wish the author had at least asked that question.
To state a more obvious thing: you can sell many croquettes, but selling larger portions of beef means you are gong to be involved in less transactions per yen. And the margins are going to be much better anyways.
Another thing that is true with more family oriented businesses is that the objective is often not to maximize profit. Of course people want sales, and healthy and stable businesses, but Japan in particular is rife with stories of something becoming very popular all of a sudden and the restaurant owner just gets overwhelmed and overall is negative on the extra business. This is probably the top point, the whole exercise of running a butcher is up to the personal whims of the people working there, and so often is not about min-maxing.
They did raise the price.
They do it as a promotion and they believe that associated/follow up sales outweighs the cost.
Not mentioned in the article: it also got them on cnn and probably a lot of other news outlets. If you are a believer in “any promotion is good promotion”.
They got a lot of press coverage out of 200 daily croquettes.