Cheescake Meltdown

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]Cheese Cake Factory, a leading cheesecake chain, today filed for bankruptcy. Well-known for their wrapped cheesecake bars, the company grew from an initial restaurant, set up in 1952, to a full-fledged retailer operating around 30 outlets, mainly in the Kanto area. Teikoku Databank estimates total liabilities at around 1.26 billion yen. Management blames a rise in raw materials prices and fierce competition although it also appears that they expanded too quickly. An attempt to set up a rehabilitation plan involving the closure of loss-making stores was abandoned in favour of filing for court protection. The failure is a blow for investment group TFP Consulting who took a stake in the business as recently as 2006. CCF was an official sponsor of J1 football team Albirex Niigata. The company has closed its website and suspended sales through Rakuten.

[GomiGirl]

Is this what they were trying to push at Bagel and Bagel? They were trying to pass off cake as flavoured cream cheese. Dreadful.

Have you tried spreading a cheese cake onto a toasted bagel - NG!!!

[Mulboyne]

The had a branch in Roppongi Hills which gives you some idea of how ambitious they were. Those "cheese bars" were oddly popular and I think some convenience stores even sold them. You might know it because they had a branch in Shinjuku just across from that egg tart place you like. Japanese report here.

[Greji]

[floatl][/floatl]Cheese Cake Factory, a leading cheesecake chain, today filed for bankruptcy. Well-known for their wrapped cheesecake bars,

Looks like a tampon! Wonder if it.... Never mind!

[Catoneinutica]

"Without question, retail real estate owners covet the Cheesecake Factory more than any other restaurant tenant. Each location produces an incredible amount of annual revenue and attracts an affluent customer base. Any shopping mall, which lands Cheesecake, is guaranteeing higher traffic for the rest of its tenants."

http://www.omahacityweekly.com/article.php?id=1053

-catone
-And here I thought it was just another Tchochke's
-Fifteen pieces of flair is the minimum

[Doctor Stop]

Cinnabon came and went.

[Mulboyne]

Cinnabon came and went.

There's still one store in Aqua City, Odaiba. The Nagoya ramen chain Sugakiya has the licence and they need to keep one outlet open to maintain it. There are other stores on the US bases but I believe they are directly managed by the US company.

[Greji]

There are other stores on the US bases but I believe they are directly managed by the US company.

That is true. They are required to contract directly with the DOD for a specific military service and if they offer a specialty that no one else does, they can be contracted for all military facilities. If it is a more common commodity with competition for the contract, it is let by individual military service i.e. obviously not pastries, but all USAF bases have Burger King facilities on contract, while the Navy has MacDonalds.

[Bucky]

[halfnip]

I presume the Japanese variety of the Cheesecake Factory and the one in the U.S. are not related --
or are they?:confused:

I know there is/was one in Sancha, but was not sure if it was actually the same---I thought it was just a privately owned place that just had the same name.

[Mulboyne]

Times: Japan’s Cheese Cake Factory forced to close by churning price of milk

Japan’s biggest chain of cheesecake restaurants has collapsed with huge debts as East Asian dairies try to cope with the soaring cost of milk. The collapse of the Tokyo-based Cheese Cake Factory (CCF) chain makes it the first big victim of a predicament that analysts believe will get worse through 2008. Buckling under 1.3 billion yen (￡6 million) in debts, CCF was forced to close its doors because the price that it pays for cheese has almost doubled in a year...Japan imports about 90 per cent of its cheese and within the past few weeks prices of bellwethers such as Australian cheddar have risen so much that they threaten to derail the business models of food producers and restaurants. Australian cheddar prices for the first half of 2008 were set yesterday at US $5,700 (￡2,888 ) per tonne, a jump from last year’s $3,000 that has caught the Japanese food industry off guard and unable to pass such steep rises on to consumers. A spokesman for Japan’s Snow Brand Milk admitted that, at $5,700 a tonne, Japan’s 290,000 tonne-a-year cheese habit was causing dramatic changes to the nation’s food makers. Australian imports made sense when they were far below the $4,250 that it cost Japanese makers to produce a tonne of cheddar using domestic milk. The company is now investing heavily in building cheese factories in Japan to take advantage of home-grown dairy herds that used to be too expensive to consider exploiting...more...

[GuyJean]

..Those "cheese bars" were oddly popular and I think some convenience stores even sold them...

Actually, those 'cheese sticks' are oddly delicious! We have a 36 Sticks shop near my place. It's like cheesecake sushi!

GJ

[omae mona]

[Mulboyne]

AP: Lotte Holdings to acquire Ginza Cozy Corner cake store chain

Lotte Holdings Co. said Friday it has signed an agreement to acquire cake store chain Ginza Cozy Corner Co., expanding into cake production and sales. Lotte Holdings, the owner of confectioner Lotte Co., said it will buy all Ginza Cozy Corner shares from its founding family and other shareholders and send a management team to the cake store chain. The deal is estimated at 20 billion yen. Lotte Holdings will take over the brand and employees of Ginza Cozy Corner, and take advantage of the cake store chain's know-how for developing new products. Ginza Cozy Corner has opened nearly 350 cake stores primarily in eastern Japan. Its sales totaled 31.6 billion yen in the year ended last August.