Message from the President

In our commitment to realizing a sustainable society, the Yoshinoya Holdings Group places great importance on the notion that sustainability initiatives not only create social value but also lead to economic value. In our “five materialities (critical issues)” we have clarified the relationship between our business activities and social issues from an ESG perspective and identified what would contribute to the sustainable growth of the company and a sustainable society. In addition, we established the “Sustainability Promotion Committee” as a forum for considering and promoting sustainability initiatives on a group-wide basis. Efforts are ongoing in this committee to formulate group-wide policies and targets related to sustainability, regularly review the KPIs, and build and develop systems for the promotion of sustainability.

While each of the “five materialities” represents an important topic that underpins the Group’s relevance in society, we have placed “Realizing diversity and inclusion to enable people to grow and thrive” at the top. As we are a provider of everyday food, the joy and sense of fulfillment that our employees feel through their work lie at the heart of our services that support delicious and enriching eating experiences for our customers. This is a value that can only be accomplished by people. Respecting the diversity and individuality of people and encouraging the active participation and growth of our employees will lead to the continued creation of value that captures the changing and expanding needs of our customers and bring about sustainable growth as a company and the return of value to society. We have set as KPIs the percentage of female employees and managers, and the percentage of employees taking paid leave, and also the improvement of employee engagement.

In addition, as a “food company,” we believe it is our social responsibility to expand “store community contribution activities” through community kitchens for children and other forms. “Eradicating poverty” is listed at the top of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and, in terms of materiality KPIs, our goal for FY2030 is to increase the number of meals served throughout the Group.

As part of our efforts to address environmental issues and climate change, we have set targets and KPIs for recycling waste from our domestic factories, reducing the use of certain plastics, and sustaining the Eco Mark certification of our restaurants. Addressing environmental issues and reducing our environmental footprint is a highly complex undertaking due to the interrelated nature of various factors within our operations and supply chain. For this reason, to sustain our activities over the long term, it is important to ask ourselves whether those activities will contribute to cost reduction and quality improvement. In other words, our basic position is that using economic value as the measure of our efforts should make our environmental activities sustainable.

We will drive sustainability initiatives that will lead to the enhancement of our corporate and social value by evaluating each KPI, while ensuring that the individual activities are interconnected. In our business operations, we have positioned the improvement of business profitability accompanied by growth and the improvement of capital efficiency as particularly critical issues. Based on a strong commitment to financial discipline and the improvement of investment efficiency, we are promoting growth investments to evolve our existing brands. In addition, we will actively pursue inorganic investments for the expansion of our business portfolio, aiming to enhance corporate value and embrace the challenge of growth as a unified Group.