Burger King’s rapid expansion in Japan has caught the eye of the Wall Street giant.

You don’t have to be a financial genius to realize that you could buy a lot of hamburgers with 70 billion yen (US$466.7 million). But did you know that dropping that much cash would allow you to buy all the hamburgers?
Well, all the hamburgers from Burger King Japan, to be more precise. The above sum is the amount that will reportedly be paid by Goldman Sachs to purchase Burger King’s Japanese operations. The U.S.-based investment bank hasn’t switched its priorities from making money to making meals, though, as it’s Burger King Japan’s potential profit growth that attracted Goldman Sachs’ attention. Burger King has been aggressively expanding in Japan over the past few years, going from just 77 branches nationwide in May of 2019 to 308 as of last month. It’s intending to keep that pace of doubling in size every three years going for at least one more cycle, as the chain’s current plan is to have 600 branches in Japan by the end of 2028.
There’s often a sense of unease among consumers in Japan when a foreign company is looking to acquire a restaurant chain or other type of food provider, given Japan’s high standards for flavor and freshness, even at price points where expectations would be low in other countries. However, Goldman Sachs purchasing Burger King Japan wouldn’t necessarily make the chain any less Japanese than it is right now, as its Japanese operations are currently owned by Hong Kong’s Affinity Equity Partners, who purchased them in 2017. Moreover, this isn’t a case of an outside organization having to come in and save a tottering company by making sweeping changes to how it does business, but rather one of Goldman Sachs thinking that Burger King Japan is on the path to a bright future, and so we can probably expect the chain’s kitchens to keep on grilling up things like sumo burgers and Kyoto Whoppers even under its new ownership.
Source: Yomiuri Shimbun
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