Money makers: how a long-lost recipe became a surprise hit

A secret recipe for battered, skewered meat and vegetables went viral, leading to a franchised food operation worth $82m.

When Hiroe Tanaka was a child her father spent endless hours working out how to perfect her favourite dish kushikatsu, made by battering skewered meat and vegetables, deep-frying them and then dipping them in sauce. But when she was 21 her dad passed away, say Min Jeong Lee, Hiroyuki Sekine and Toshiro Hasegawa for Bloomberg Food, and Tanaka thought that her father's recipe had died with him. In the meantime she had dropped out of university and was working in a bar managed by Keiji Nuki, who is now her business partner, but despite numerous attempts she couldn't replicate the taste of her father's kushikatsu.

When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Nuki's business struggled, yet Tanaka refused to quit, even offering to borrow money for the business under her own name. And then she found the answer. "In a box of memos and mementos from her dad" was a recipe. "It's not like the memo had success guaranteed' written on it", says Nuki. But the recipe worked. Soon the Kushikatsu Tanaka had gone viral. "People were lined up to get in even at 1am." Today the firm has adopted a franchise model and is worth $82m. As for the recipe, Tanaka "says only herself and Nuki have seen it since she found it, and it's going to stay that way".

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Chris Carter
Wealth Editor, MoneyWeek

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

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