The inspiration behind the restaurant came from the owner's love for Japanese cuisine during her travels to Japan. When she returned to Singapore, she found that the prices for Japanese rice bowls were prohibitively expensive.
This led her to start Kei in May 2017, and from there, the restaurant has grown to a successful chain of 30 outlets in 2023. The company aims to spread the spirit of graciousness through its brand vision. To cater to diverse markets, the company has come out with three brands: Kei, Onkei, and Keitaku. Each brand offers different Japanese cuisine to satisfy customers' preferences.
Kei is a Japanese restaurant that serves kaisendon, which are delicious rice bowls topped with fresh sashimi from Japan. Onkei serves a variety of tonkatsu dishes, which are pork cutlets fried with light and clean vegetable oil. Meanwhile, Keitaku specializes in mazesoba, which is a broth-less dry ramen noodle dish made with thick chewy noodles, topped with ground pork, seaweed, spring onion, and onsen egg.
The biggest challenge that the company faced is the competitive environment. To overcome it, it is constantly innovating new dishes that cater to the preferences and tastes of customers, reminding the team of the vision and mission, and learning from mistakes and failures.
We are honoured to be chosen as the winner of the Golden Bull Award 2023, as the company has grown from a humble start-up in 2017 to a successful chain in 2023 and have demonstrated innovation and excellence in its business operations.
