MANILA, Philippines — In the last decade since it came to the Philippines, Japanese restaurant chain Ramen Nagi has claimed to have served more than 10 million bowls of ramen across its 37 branches throughout Metro Manila and Luzon.
Anticipating further growth, the growing ramen chain is expanding its presence to Visayas and Mindanao in the near future. The restaurant chain has the most stores in the Philippines.
At their recent 10th Philippine anniversary celebrations in their Greenbelt 3 Makati City branch, founder Chef Satoshi Ikuta shared to Philstar.com the ingredients that make up their recipe for success:
Authentic Japanese taste
“What makes us successful in the past 10 years is because we bring all the original ingredients that we have in Japan. We didn’t align it with the Filipino taste. We brought the original Japanese taste,” Ikuta explained via an interpreter.
Customization service
According to Ikuta, their ramen customization sheet, which servers hand out to customers to fill out so they could “personalize” their bowl of ramen to their own liking, has also been a hit and thus contributes to their popularity.
Variety
What makes their restaurant chain stand out from all the Japanese ramen houses worldwide, said Ikuta, is that they introduced new types of ramen and made them attractive to people all around the world.
Consistency
Ikuta said, even if they open new stores overseas, they make sure to personally open and visit each store to bring their original recipes. They also do their annual checking and audit of each branch to make sure that their stores’ chefs do not make alterations to the recipes.
“We always make sure that everyone complies to our standards,” he assured customers.
Ambience
“We made sure that the ambience of the shop will make you feel hungry. That is the most important,” enthused Ikuta, who opened the brand as a small ramen house in Fukuoka, Japan in 2006.
Apart from the Philippines, the brand has five restaurants in its home country Japan and 15 in other countries (five in USA, three in China, five in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong and one in Singapore).
According to Ikuta, moving forward, they plan to “perfect everything, just like the first shop in (SM) Aura,” and bring this same level of excellence “consistently” to all of their branches worldwide.