Mom's Touch to open 11 new stores in Japan, eyes 100 by end of next year

Mom's Touch announced Wednesday it will open 11 new stores in Japan by the end of this year.

The company recently held a franchise showcase at its Harajuku location in Tokyo, targeting prospective local franchisees. Attendees included representatives from major Japanese corporate franchise operators — among them JR Tokai Retailing Plus and WDI Japan, which operate Starbucks locations — as well as HIS, one of Japan's largest travel agencies. Nakamura Shoichi, president and CEO of Mom's Touch Japan, presented the performance of the chain's five directly operated and franchised stores and declared that this year marks "the first year of full-scale franchise expansion" in Japan.

Mom's Touch plans to open its second local franchise store in Itabashi in October, adding 11 new locations in Tokyo and nearby areas in the second half of the year. The total number of stores in Japan will reach 16 by year-end. The company aims to operate 100 stores across Japan, centered on the Kanto region, by the end of next year.

At the showcase, Mom's Touch presented a Japan-tailored franchise business model built around what it calls a "K-QSR platform" — running burgers, chicken and pizza out of a single store. The strategy is designed to capture demand for burgers at breakfast and lunch, chicken in the evening, and pizza on weekends and holidays, smoothing out revenue concentration by time of day and allowing higher-ticket menu items to fill slower burger hours.

In April, Mom's Touch developed the Japan-specific franchise model by adapting store development protocols proven at its Korean headquarters to local market conditions. The company also introduced a data-driven franchise inbound platform that systematizes the entire process from prospective franchisee discovery through consultation, store tours and contract signing. It has also renamed its Japanese subsidiary from Mom's Touch Tokyo to Mom's Touch Japan. In August, the company will open a franchisee training store in Shinjuku; in September it will relocate its local corporate office from Shibuya to Shinjuku.

Mom's Touch formally entered the Japanese market in April 2024 with its first permanent location, Shibuya Mom's Touch, following a pop-up store in Tokyo's Shibuya in October 2023. The Shibuya store has recorded about 1.44 million cumulative visitors and approximately 10.4 billion won ($7.05 million) in cumulative sales in its first two years of operation. Last year's average annual sales were about 1.9 times the average per-store sales of McDonald's Japan and about 7.7 times those of MOS Burger.