CNN – It will take an additional 43 years to receive an order for a package of frozen Kobe beef croquettes from Asahiya, a family-run butcher business in Takasago City, Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan.
It’s not a typo. Forty. For three years.
Asahiya, which was established in 1926, sold meat products from Hyogo prefecture for many years, including Kobe beef, before introducing beef croquettes to the market in the years after World War II.
However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that these beef and potato dumplings, which are deep-fried, gained popularity online and led to the absurdly lengthy lines that customers today have to endure.
In 2022, Shigeru Nitta, the third-generation proprietor of Asahiya, was interviewed by CNN Travel. The wait for the croquettes was only thirty years at that point.
An unsuccessful business venture
Asahiya offers four varieties of Kobe beef croquettes, one of which is the widely sought-after “Extreme Croquettes.” Not able to wait over forty years? There is presently a more than four-year waitlist for the store’s Premier Kobe Beef Croquettes. “In 1999, we began offering our products for sale online,” Nitta stated. “We provided Extreme Croquettes as a trial at that time.” Since he was a small child, Nitta has accompanied his father to the nearby ranches and beef auctions while growing up in Hyogo. In 1994, at the age of thirty, he succeeded his father in running the shop. He discovered after a few years of e-commerce experimentation that consumers were reluctant to pay a high price for top beef online.
That’s when he took a risky move. “Each Extreme Croquette cost JPY 270 ($1.80) that we sold it for. Nitta revealed that the cost of the beef alone in them is approximately JPY400 ($2.70) per piece. “We created tasty and reasonably priced croquettes that showcase our shop’s concept in the hopes that customers would enjoy them and, after tasting them, purchase our Kobe beef.” In the beginning, Asahiya only made 200 croquettes a week in their own kitchen next to their store to minimize their financial loss. We market beef that has been farmed by acquaintances. We only stock meat from Hyogo Prefecture in our shop, whether it’s Tajima chicken, Kobe pig, or Kobe beef.
Production increased, but demand is rising
The cheap price tag of the Extreme Croquettes flies in the face of the quality of the ingredients. They’re made fresh daily with no preservatives. Ingredients include three-year-old female A5-ranked Kobe beef and potatoes sourced from a local ranch. Nitta said that he has encouraged the ranch to use cow manure to grow the potatoes. The stems of the potatoes will then be fed to the cows, creating a cycle. Eventually, his unique concept caught the attention of locals and media. When a report about Asahiya’s croquettes came out in the early 2000s, their popularity skyrocketed. “We stopped selling them in 2016 because the waiting time became over 14 years. We were thinking of stopping orders, but we got many calls requesting to keep offering them,” Nitta said.
Asahiya resumed accepting orders for these croquettes in 2017 but raised the price.
