There’s a 43-year waiting list for these Japanese croquettes
Delicious, a croquette every now and then. My great weakness is the satay croquette, but I can also really enjoy a white bread roll with a beef croquette and mustard. And the great thing is that you can simply get those croquettes straight from the FEBO vending machine — easy as pie. You don’t have to wait 43 years for them, as is the case with these Japanese croquettes. Crazy, right?
And what’s even more bizarre is that these are frozen croquettes. So if you’re curious about these croquettes… go ahead and order them, and you might have them by the time you retire. But probably not.
Not just any beef croquettes
The croquettes in question are Asahiya’s beef croquettes, made by a family-run butcher’s shop in Takasago (a city in western Japan). But this isn’t just any beef; these croquettes are filled with Kobe beef. Meat known for its extraordinary texture, refined buttery notes and unparalleled juiciness. My mouth is watering just writing about it. But that’s probably as far as it will go, because this is a rare product and — but you probably guessed that already — it comes at a hefty price.
Asahiya has been selling the special Kobe croquettes since shortly after the Second World War, but they have been more popular than ever since the turn of the century. With this long waiting line as a result. They sell four types of croquettes, including the ‘Extreme Croquette’ filled with Kobe beef.
Owner Shigeru Nitta told CNN: ‘We started selling our products online in 1999. At that time, we offered the Extreme Croquette as a kind of trial.’
Extreme Croquettes with no profit margin
As mentioned, Kobe beef is anything but cheap, yet they initially kept the price low: in 1999, one piece cost just $1.80, while the meat alone cost them $2.70 to purchase. So they made a substantial loss on the Extreme Croquettes, but it did pay off: the croquettes became a gi-gan-tic hit. Nitta’s strategy was for customers to come back to buy Kobe beef after tasting in the croquettes how delicious the meat is.
That price ultimately turned out to be far too low, and in 2016 they were sold for $3.65 each — still not much. But that year Nitta decided to stop selling them, because the waiting list had grown to fourteen years. People didn’t appreciate that, and due to all the criticism Nitta continued accepting orders after all. Whereas he initially introduced the Extreme Croquettes as a test and made just 200 per week, by 2017 they were producing that quantity per day — and the waiting list still kept getting longer and longer.
Joining the back of the line
By now, more than 63,000 people are on the waiting list, so it takes over 40 years before you finally have your portion of croquettes at home — and even then, they only ship domestically. Yep; in Japan alone, 63,000 people are waiting for their croquettes, so just imagine if they started shipping worldwide. What I do find admirable is that Nitta could easily choose to raise the price, but chooses not to.
A box of five frozen Extreme Croquettes now costs $18.20. I’m secretly curious whether a gigantic black market has developed for them, because according to Nitta, this has even been the reason people wanted to keep living. ‘I heard that our croquettes were the motivation for a cancer patient to undergo an operation after all, so they could survive. That surprised me the most of all the stories,’ says Nitta.
Now I’m very curious indeed, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to taste these special Japanese croquettes in this lifetime…
Also read:
- An ode to the Indonesian croquette
- Recipe: Tobias Camman’s delicious cheese croquettes
- Want to taste it: the Old Amsterdam cheese croquette
Image: Asahiya
