Future Proof: Giving Dubliners a taste of Japan

A quiet restlessness, a desire for innovation and capturing a niche market have allowed Derek Ryan to succeed as a restaurateur where many have failed.

Identifying a niche in the restaurant trade in 1995 led Ryan to open Yamamori Noodles on South Great George’s Street in Dublin.

He opened the restaurant on a site where three Chinese restaurants had failed, ripped out the interior, threw the roof of the bar into a skip and tore out the snazzy lacquered furniture, replacing it with the church pews and more relaxed dining arrangements his customers and their kids have grown up with for the past 18 years.

From the first restaurant on one of Dublin’s busiest streets, Ryan now employs about 150 staff across the three city centre locations which can seat 650 customers, and which sometimes serve up to 10,000 customers per week. That’s a lot of bums on seats.

Despite this huge turnover, it’s a difficult industry, particularly in the past few years. But Ryan has managed not only to sustain the business but to grow it into a mini-empire (though one suspects he would balk at the term).

Inspirational
For him it's always been a question of looking the other way to the herd. While others in the late 1990s and early-2000were buying up pubs, clubs and restaurants to beat the band, Ryan kept his business small and manageable.

“I never believed in the boom,” he says. “It all struck me as nonsense at the time – too good to be true. You were talking about millions to expand your business then, and I didn’t have millions so I didn’t do it.

“But even if I had had millions, I wouldn’t have done it. If everyone’s going this way, I’m usually going the opposite.”

Ryan cites restaurateur and furniture designer of Habitat fame Terence Conran as an inspirational character. “He said it’s a question of giving people something they don’t even know they want yet, but giving it to them at an affordable price – that’s how it was with Yamamori.

“People didn’t know about this food when I first opened and the first two years were tough even trying to get people in the door. In a way, we have educated many Irish people about Japanese food.”

What started as a good idea has become something of an obsession for Ryan, who admits he wouldn’t be in the business or have recently opened yet more restaurants if he didn’t love what he did.

It has also been the start of a long love affair with Japanese culture. He is now an avid collector of Japanese art, antique artefacts and memorabilia, much of which is used to decorate his three eateries: Yamamori Noodles and Izakaya on George’s Street and Yamamori Sushi on Dublin’s Ormond Quay.

There are challenges inherent in running three large establishments and keeping a tight ship not least, says Ryan, in terms of the increased focus on rules and regulations: “You spend a lot of time crossing Ts and dotting Is . . .”

And the current restriction on international visa grants is a major headache for the restaurateur who requires that his staff is trained in particular skills such as sushi making.

“The visa situation not only causes difficulty in terms of losing good staff when visas aren’t renewed, but it also drives costs up as the skilled people you are already employing demand more money for their positions.”

He also cites huge increases in commercial rents during the boom as a major negative factor on business.

While he generally eschews publicity or interview of any description, there is a quiet determination about him.

“I’ve been close to broke but I’ve never been broke, I’ve never gone out of business and I certainly don't intend to,” says Ryan.

He jokes that he couldn’t fry an egg but he’s never been the one wielding the wok. For him it’s more about getting the right people around him to do the job, and maintaining a loyal staff.

Philosophy
"I believe business is 90 per cent about common sense and 10 per cent about employing the right people."

Ryan says that he has been asked to open a Yamamori in Toyko. It’s something he would consider but, for now, he’ll be keeping a close handle on what’s happening here, where he expects 15 per cent growth this year.

He attributes his success so far to the Japanese notion of “Kaizen” or “continuous improvement”. It is a philosophy employed by Japanese car manufacturer Toyota, he explains – the notion of changing something every day to make it better than it was before.