Restaurant chains in Japan are rushing to raise their prices amid soaring raw material and fuel prices, as well as rising labor costs due to staff shortages.

Price increases may cost restaurants even more customers at a time when diner traffic is slowing due to the seventh wave of novel coronavirus infections in the country.

Hiday Hidaka Corp., which operates Chinese restaurant chain Hidakaya, said Wednesday that it will raise prices for many of its some 80 menu items by 10-60 yen, effective from Aug. 26.

While the price of its mainstay Chinese noodles will be left unchanged at 390 yen, a spokesperson for the chain said that costs have risen to “levels that cannot be offset by corporate efforts alone.”

Plenus Co., the operator of “teishoku” set meal restaurant chain Yayoi, will raise the prices of 17 teishoku meals by 30 yen on Sept. 1, while lowering prices for menu items for children.

At Denny’s family restaurants, the prices of some 40 menu items including pasta dishes will go up by 10-80 yen on Sept. 6. The restaurant chain will exclude popular products, such as hamburgers and desserts, from the price hikes, in the hope of minimizing adverse effects.

Conveyor-belt sushi chain Sushiro will no longer offer its iconic 100-yen sushi dishes, set to increase prices at its suburban outlets by 10-30 yen per dish on Oct. 1.

In July, Skylark Holdings Co.’s  mainstay restaurant chain Gusto carried out price hikes and also introduced a system to set higher prices at urban outlets.

Hit by the seventh COVID-19 wave, Skylark Holdings is planning to raise prices again in October or later while shutting some 100 group restaurants.

According to private credit research firm Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd., 53 major restaurant chains in the country announced price increases between January and early July, and most of the planned increases have been implemented.

“Some companies are expected to raise prices further in autumn or later,” an official of the research firm said.

JIJI Press