How much money do you think you’ll spend at your favorite ramen restaurant chain in your lifetime? If it’s over 300,000 yen, then the deal offered by Chiba Prefecture’s Uramusashiya makes a lot of sense.
Uramusashiya’s original branch is located near Nishi Chiba Station in Chiba City, and it just opened a second restaurant close to Soga Station, also in Chiba City. Their specialty is a rich soy sauce/chicken stock broth, and for those who truly love it, Uramusashiya sent out an announcement through the restaurant’s official Twitter account that they were offering lifetime passes, priced at 300,000 yen.
The passes are valid at either Uramusashiya location, and get you a free bowl of noodles on each visit to the restaurant, in perpetuity.
▼ Uramusashi’s surprisingly rocking promotional video
So the question becomes where’s the break-even point on this ramen-related investment? Looking at Uramusashiya’s menu, their basic ramen is priced at 800 yen, so you’d have to eat 375 bowls of it to get your money’s worth.
However, the lifetime pass announcement says that you can also select more expensive chashu and limited-time ramen varieties too. The menu lists three kinds of chashu ramen, two at 1,150 yen, and one at 1,350 yen. Assuming the 1,350-yen is eligible, that would mean you only need to eat 223 bowls of ramen to make the lifetime pass a worthwhile use of your money, but there’s more. In addition to ramen, the lifetime pass is also good for side orders of rice, which ordinarily cost 100 yen, so if you’re ordering the premium chashu ramen and a side of rice each time, you only need to have 207 such meals to start coming out ahead.
That doesn’t mean that it would take at least 207 days to break even, though, because Uramusashiya is good for multiple visits on the same day. The restaurant opens at 11 a.m. and closes at midnight during the week and at 10 p.m. on weekends and holidays, so assuming you’re OK with a late breakfast, the 300,000-yen pass could ostensibly cover all of your meal expenses for the rest of your life, barring Tuesdays, when the restaurant is closed.
Uramusashiya didn’t say how many lifetime passes it was issuing, and explained that they’d be first offered to customers who are already regulars at the restaurant. Whatever number were available, they were all snatched up within two days, proving that there are people who indeed feel like pre-purchasing a life’s worth of ramen meals is a sound decision. This wasn’t the first time for Uramusashi to offer lifetime passes, though, as they’ve previously sold 100,000-yen unlimited ramen passes for students only, so maybe we’ll see this sort of deal from them again in the future.
Restaurant information
Uramusashiya (Nishi Chiba branch)/ 裏武蔵家 (西千葉店)
Address: Chiba-ken, Chiba-shi, Chuo-ku 2-19-9
千葉県千葉市中央区春日２丁目１９−９
Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5 p.m.-midnight (weekdays), 11 a.m.-4 p.m., 5 p.m.-10 p.m. (weekends, holidays)
Source: Twitter/@musashiya_cb via Hachima
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- External Link
- https://soranews24.com/2023/10/21/ramen-restaurant-offers-free-ramen-for-the-rest-of-your-life-for-300000-yen/
12 Comments
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Gene Hennigh
I wish some US fast food or sit-down restaurants would do this, I'm so old it would be wasted on me, but it's a good idea, especially for the working class. Good thinking.
Aly Rustom
shame they don't have a shop near my house. I'd gladly purchase a lifetime deal
beachcomber
This is a really interesting subscription service. But this is too risky to maintain your health, it may cost more.
Cogs rate of ramen is 30%, which means break even for the store is around 1,000 ramen. I suppose people cannot eat the same ramen that much in a lifetime.
virusrex
Interesting as a publicity stunt but not as a business model in general. The people that got the limited lifetime passes are probably the most interested in keeping them in low numbers, because if the numbers go into the red because of too many people enjoying them it will not matter how many years of life they have.
BackpackingNepal
It's a trick or treat offer.
It's a treat if you are survived for next 20 years and live around the same area after you get the first service, otherwise it's a trick.
WhiskeyGalore
I'm sure that if you ate ramen bowls three time a day your lifetime will be pretty short.
We saw it with American Airlines that having lifetime passes is Not A Good Idea.
My father had a lifelong ticket to fly anywhere. Then they took it away | Family | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/19/american-airlines-aairpass-golden-ticket
kohakuebisu
This is just a promotion thing, but with ramen-ya, its actually good to appear busy so others assume your ramen is delicious. There are many stories of newly opened ramen-ya using mates and paid folk to queue up, so others join the queue or make a mental note of the restaurant as one to go to. This practice is known as "sakura".
So even if the folk buying this ticket eat tons and tons of ramen, way in excess of 300,000 yen in todays money, they will at least ensure a certain number of folk in the restaurant, which is never a bad thing for a ramen-ya. Even if the cost of gas and ingredients skyrockets, new customers will not know that the people they see eating a now 2000 yen ramen didn't pay that for it. They will instead assume that this ramen-ya must be making 2000 yen quality noodles. The average person will assume any ramenya with no customers must be rubbish.
WA4TKG
Soooo; it's NOT Free then, is it ?
virusrex
According to the article a couple of years is enough to make the value of the pass for frequent clients, that is not really that much of a bet.
ushosh123
It's good up to a point, for both the restaurant and the customer.