Ajisen Ramen is a Japan-based chain of fast food restaurants selling Japanese ramennoodle soup dishes. The company's logo, featuring artwork of a little girl named Chii-chan, can be found on their stores and products. Outside of Japan, Ajisen Ramen has outlets in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Finland, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Marianas, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States, Vietnam, Italy and Panama. There are over 700 Ajisen Ramen restaurants.
History
1968 – Pork bone white soup based Tonkotsu ramen from Kurume, Fukuoka was modified with garlic flavour by a Hakka person from Meinong, Taiwan in Kumamoto, Japan. He is the founder Takaharu Shigemitsu, or original name Liu Tan Hsiang.
1972 – Shigemitsu Industry Co., Ltd. was incorporated and a noodle and soup factory was established. Franchising was started by the company.
1994 – The first oversea joint venture business was started at Taipei, Taiwan. It ended three years later without success.
1996 – With the death of Takaharu Shigemitsu, his son Katsuaki Shigemitsu took over the business. Poon Wai opened the first store in Hong Kong under license of Ajisen Ramen.
Since its inception, Ajisen Ramen has made significant headway into the Chinese market, especially in the metropolis of Shanghai, where it has 132 locations. There are a total of 590 Ajisen restaurants in the China region as of August 2011. Those expansion of stores were started by present CEO of Ajisen Ramen Ltd., Poon Wai from Hong Kong in 1996. The current president of the Hong Kong-listed Ajisen China Holdings is businesswoman Poon Wai. The company's executive directors were Poon Wai, her brother Jason Poon Ka Man, and Yin Yi Bing. Yan resigned on 18 July 2013. In 2011 the Chinese company was fined 200,000 yuan for misrepresenting the nutritional content of its soup.
United States
There are numbers of locations in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and the first Ajisen Ramen restaurant opened in San Diego on November 2016. Corporate manufacturing and distribution headquarters for U.S. operations supplies U.S. stores as well as Guam is located at S. El Monte, Los Angeles CA.
Panama
Ciudad de Panamá
Ajisen Ramen - Via Brasil
Ajisen Ramen - El Dorado
Europe
Ajisen Ramen opened a new outlet at Helsinki Airport in Finland in 2019. This is the first location in the Nordic Countries and the second in Europe. The restaurant opened in the newest part of the ongoing terminal expansion at the airport in early 2019. Ajisen Ramen also has an outlet in Rome Fiumicino Airport.
The company announced the appointment of Joseph Lau Si-sing as chief operating officer on 18 July 2013. Lau left the company "by mutual consent" in late September, five days after corporate governance activist David Webb criticised his appointment. Webb pointed out that the company had failed to disclose that Lau, former managing director of McDonald's, was convicted in April 2009 of bribery and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Later, Webb blogged that Lau did not graduate from Caltech as was claimed in the company's appointment announcement. Lau's prison term expired just three days before Ajisen first announced his appointment. The company said the errors were "mainly caused by insufficient communication between Lau and the staff of our human resources department and translation error".
