Sales and Service

Sales system

The Hoshizaki Group has 15 sales companies and about 430 sales bases under its umbrella throughout Japan. Using this extensive network, we realize proposal-based sales closely connected to the local area and a prompt and meticulous maintenance system. A key feature of the group is a business model that integrates manufacturing and sales based on collaboration between the Company, which is responsible for product development and manufacturing, and our sales companies, which are responsible for sales and after-sales service. Sales and service staff carry out activities working in pairs at sales companies, which allows us to provide products and services that better match customer needs.

Kitchen design and construction

The Hoshizaki Group has about 150 design staff nationwide, who plan more than 16,000 kitchen projects each year. Our unparalleled strength is being able to combine the Company’s products with those of other companies to implement total planning and meet the needs of customers in a single package. By combining customized products tailored to the customer’s business type, zoning that leads to the improvement of operations, a system that allows for the integrated management of food temperature records using a PC, etc., and proposing high value-added kitchen plans using intuitive, easy-to-understand 3D images, we have achieved a track record of constructing about 9,000 complete kitchens a year, including foreign-owned five-star hotels, hospitals with more than 1,000 beds, company cafeterias, and restaurant chains starting in Japan for the first time.

In addition, apart from kitchens, we also design and construct large-scale facilities that support cold chains, such as processing rooms in food processing factories, clean rooms and refrigerators in food warehouses, and refrigerators at fruit and vegetable markets.

Examples of 3D proposals

Service and support system

The Hoshizaki Group has about 2,700 service staff nationwide who perform maintenance on all products delivered to customers’ kitchens, including not only Hoshizaki products, but other manufacturers’ products too, and accumulate repair data and other information to reduce customers’ costs and propose the optimal timing for the replacement of equipment. In addition, through regular visits under the maintenance contracts that many of our customers enter into, our staff photograph and list the condition of equipment used by customers and provide advice on methods of use, thereby supporting breakdown prevention and planned renewals. Customer opinions received by service staff during visits are fed back to sales and product development staff and reflected in future product proposals and product development. We have established a call center as a contact point for equipment maintenance and repairs for specific customers, and built a service system that accepts calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and provides a same-day response.

Enhanced support

The Hoshizaki Group has about 85 total food advisors and corporate chefs with experience working at first-class hotels, who hold food seminars and support recipe development and hygiene management at about 60 test kitchens across Japan.

The test kitchens also create solutions such as dysphagia meals, soft meals and jelly meals that address the aging of the population and other social issues, and such examples are shared and rolled-out horizontally by sales companies nationwide to respond to the problems of customers in each region.

In addition, since the COVID-19 pandemic, stores that have begun takeout and EC sales have increased in number, so we offer services from operational proposals using refrigeration technology and vacuum packaging machines to consulting on hygiene management in delivery.

We have established about 60 test kitchens nationwide (the photo is of a test kitchen in Shinagawa, Tokyo)

Establishment of a safe and secure food environment

HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) is the global standard for food hygiene management, and is becoming increasingly mandatory, centered on developed countries. In Japan too, the revision of the Food Sanitation Act in June 2018 made the introduction of HACCP mandatory for all food business operators, including restaurants, from June 2020.

Because the introduction of HACCP will contribute to the resolution of social issues, such as the improvement of customers’ productivity and the reduction of food loss, the Company and our sales companies in Japan are supporting the introduction of HACCP positively. Apart from publishing support information on our website, the Company has trained about 670 HACCP-related qualified personnel to provide customers with hygiene diagnosis, support for the acquisition of HACCP certification, crisis management equipment, kitchen design support based on HACCP and other services.

In addition, we also have a wide range of products such as electrolyzed water generators (hypochlorous acid water generators) for hygiene control, steam convection ovens for heating and cooking, and freezing and refrigeration equipment such as blast chillers and shock freezers for rapid cooling, and we also support staff education based on our extensive experience in HACCP compliance, etc.

Various support for customers

In association with changes in social conditions, moves towards the restructuring of business operations and the decarbonization management in the food business industry are becoming more active. The Company and our sales companies in Japan interview customers across the restaurant, ready-made food and home cooking industries about their initiatives and provide information on the most appropriate subsidies and grants as a tool for proposing solutions to their issues.

There is a wide variety of subsidies and grants available, including, for example, subsidies for the introduction of freezing and refrigeration equipment to strengthen EC sales to support the sustainability of small businesses, subsidies to support the promotion of work-style reform for the improvement of labor productivity and the expansion of welfare through the introduction of more efficient equipment such as steam convection ovens and dishwashers, and subsidies for support projects that promote energy-saving investment for upgrading to equipment with high energy-saving performance. At the same time, we have established the Hoshizaki Subsidy Support Desk as a contact point for inquiries from customers.

After-sales service through information transmission

At the Hoshizaki Group, we do not only sell products, but also focus on the transmission of information through our website and other media so that our customers can use products to the full. On the website for “Cook Everio,” a steam convection oven that can perform a variety of heating and cooking tasks in a single unit, we have published an operating guide, a care guide, case studies of use by customers and more than 1,200 recipes.

Post recipes for cooking with steam convection ovens as well as articles of interest, including the manga “Hanjoten he no Michi” (“Road to Prosperity”)

Improvement of customer satisfaction

The Hoshizaki Group conducts questionnaire surveys among customers visiting kitchen equipment exhibitions and the like, and implements a PDCA cycle of product improvement and quality control by planning, designing and producing products based on customer opinions and changes in society, and obtaining opinions from customers who have actually used our products.

In addition, we also implement customer satisfaction surveys regularly among customers with maintenance contracts aimed at the improvement of customer service. Analyzing and sharing the results of customer responses regarding sales representatives, service staff, products and Hoshizaki in general leads to initiatives for the improvement of customer satisfaction.