Overseas Expansion

Overseas Expansion

Expansion of Stores into Taiwan,Malaysia and U.S.
Around 100 Store Openings Overseas in 3 Years

As of May 2025, Skylark Group has 78 stores in Taiwan, 19 in Malaysia, and 2 in the U.S. While opening more stores in Japan, we will also open stores in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the U.S., where we have been conducting market research on growth potential. For the time being, however, we plan only carefully selected store openings while we closely monitor economic conditions.

【Malaysia】Development of a brand strategy for two different target groups: ethnic Chinese and Malays

In Malaysia, a country with a very young average age of 29, the restaurant market is expected to grow further, primarily within the child-rearing age range and other age ranges with strong consumption propensity.
Malaysia is a country that comprises two large ethnic groups, Malays and Chinese. We aim to rapidly expand our store network in the country by developing brand strategies for these different target groups. As a concrete action, in January 2025 we acquired all shares of Createries Consultancy Sdn. Bhd. (CC Group), which operates the popular Suki-Ya shabu-shabu restaurant in Malaysia, and made the company a subsidiary. We are expanding our store network in Malaysia, including Skylark’s SHABU-YO brand, with the aim of full-scale entry into the Southeast Asian market.

Synergies between the two companies

By holding two shabu-shabu brands, sharing is possible in many areas including procurement, delivery, store design, and human resource training, which dramatically increases business efficiency.

• Suki-Ya: A Muslim-oriented restaurant that does not serve pork or alcohol, with 13 stores in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area. It has become popular with Muslim customers
• SHABU-YO: A restaurant that serves pork and alcohol, with six stores in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area. It is popular particularly with ethnic Chinese customers.

【Taiwan】12 stores opened in 2024, with strong performance

We have steadily grown our number of stores and sales in Taiwan. In 2024, we opened 12 stores in the Musashinomori Coffee, Yokohama Steakhouse, and Shabu-Yo shabu-shabu specialty store brands. In 2023 in Taipei, we established a new Skylark factory that roughly doubled our scale and production capacity in Taiwan. The factory will shoulder the primary processing of different brands’ ingredients for future multi-store development. Having built this foundation for expansion, we plan to open stores at a pace of over 10 stores per year.

Our business in Taiwan

【United States】50 store openings in 3 years

We have made progress in improving our operations and profit structure in our U.S. store, and performance has been very strong. The U.S. is a market where we expect twice the guest count and triple the average check of Japan. After generating solid results from around three to five stores, we believe that rapid expansion through franchising will be possible. We are planning about 50 new store openings over the next three years.

News

Although family dining in the U.S. is focused on fast food, SHABU-YO has earned great support from families. We expect it to secure a future position in the market as a new family restaurant. The first store has grown into a high-sales store with annual sales exceeding 500 million yen. We opened a second store at the end of 2024.

The first U.S. store in Chicago is a highsales store with annual sales exceeding 500 million yen.