Feeding the UK’s growing taste for Japanese cuisine

Tazaki Foods is a Business Reporter client.

How Tazaki Foods has been pioneering Japanese cuisine in the UK for more than 40 years

Cooking Japanese cuisine at home is growing in popularity in UK households. Supermarket sales of Japanese food brands are on the rise, as increasing numbers of Britons become more adventurous in their home kitchens and try to replicate dishes being served in popular Japanese restaurants on our high streets. Sushi, katsu, miso and yakitori are no longer a mystery and are fast becoming a regular part of our culinary repertoires.

Spearheading the demystification of Japanese cuisine in the UK has been Tazaki Foods, a £70m turnover Japanese food business which has been an important part of that journey for more than 40 years. From the opening of one of the first Japanese restaurants in the UK in 1978 and supplying the growing number of Japanese restaurants arriving on British high streets since the 1980s, to successfully transitioning Japanese cuisine from specialist restaurants to home kitchens by launching the UK’s first Japanese ingredients brand, Yutaka, available on mainstream supermarket shelves since the 1990s, it’s been at the forefront of Japanese cuisine in the UK.

What Tazaki doesn’t know about Japanese cuisine isn’t worth knowing.

The birth of Japanese cuisine in the UK

Tazaki Foods, founded by Mr Tazaki himself, was the pioneer of Japanese food in the UK. At a time when people didn’t generally travel to Japan to experience its culture and cuisine, Mr Tazaki opened one of the first Japanese restaurants in the UK in the 1970s, as well as a small Japanese retail shop in London that offered a service to the Japanese expat community living in the capital. Both businesses gained in popularity over the next ten years or more.

In 1990, Ken Furukawa, a Japanese businessman and importer of British clothes and antiques, left his home country to seek a new life in England with his British wife. He found himself heading up Tazaki Foods and it wasn’t long before he developed big plans to expand the business at a time when Japanese cuisine was starting to be noticed outside of Japan.

Mr Furukawa made the decision to close Tazaki Foods’ small retail shop and instead began to focus on supplying Japanese restaurants as well as the hospitality industry and food manufacturers with authentic, quality Japanese ingredients.

In 1993 Wagamama opened its first Japanese food restaurant in England, supplied by Tazaki Foods, and ramen, not sushi, was the key focus. “At the start, people’s perception of Japanese food was based only on raw fish, which tended to turn the British off,” says Mr Furukawa. “The biggest challenge was to educate people about wider Japanese cuisine, but promoting sushi was considered a bad idea.”

Changing attitudes

However, attitudes began to change and throughout the 90s Japanese food started to become more popular. Retailers such as Sainsbury’s and Waitrose recognised this, and Tazaki Foods responded by supplying them with imported Japanese products. But the ingredients, packaging and illegible language proved a barrier to purchase. What was needed was a Japanese brand developed specially for the UK market.

In 1995, Tazaki decided to launch Yutaka (which means “good harvest” in Japanese), a range of Japanese foods more suitable for and accessible to UK and European consumers. But according to Mr Furukawa, one of the biggest challenges was working with authentic Japanese manufacturers who were more used to supplying Japanese retail and food service. It was a fine balance between authenticity and accessibility, so products had to be tailor-made to meet UK supermarket requirements.

Japanese goes mainstream

Since the launch of Yutaka and with a huge variety of Japanese cuisine now available in supermarkets, restaurants and takeaway outlets across the UK, it’s clear Japanese cuisine has infiltrated the British way of life and has developed mass appeal.

Says Mr Furukawa: “British palates have changed, and we have become more adventurous with our foods and open to trying new ways of cooking and preparing different foods. Ironically, sushi and raw fish is particularly popular, and we can tell from sales of our sushi-related Yutaka products that more and more people are now making their own sushi at home. Japanese food and cooking methods are becoming more authentic, a lot of young British chefs are now using Japanese food and techniques such as fermentation in their cooking, and consumers are making healthier food choices [such as] Japanese cuisine, which is based around freshness, seasonality and quality of ingredients.”

In 2022, Tazaki Foods opened the first of several planned specialist cash and carry outlets in Greenwich, London, adding a third dimension to the business, which now includes retail in addition to its Yutaka brand and restaurant and food service supply business.

Today, Tazaki Foods is the leading supplier to Japanese restaurants, hospitality and food manufacturers in the UK, turning over £70m and with over 200 employees. Having been the first to market, its Yutaka brand continues to be the leading Japanese food ingredient brand in many countries across Europe, with the company’s 40-plus years of experience in dealing with the finest quality Japanese food ingredients going into the development of every Yutaka product. Tazaki Foods also has the most comprehensive range of Japanese sake and shochu in Europe, with more than 170 labels available in its online shop.

To find out more, visit tazakifoods.com and yutaka.london.

Ken Furukawa, Chief Executive Officer, Tazaki Foods