Steamed octopus, the company's main product

Shimizu：Our company inauguration took place in 1907. In the beginning years, we dealt mainly with seaweed such as wakame among seafood, and as time changed, we met our needs by handling seafood such as dried infant sardines or herrings. Nowadays, we concentrate on octopus, squid, and shrimp, producing steamed octopus from Mauritania and domestic prefectures and packed processed products. Besides the fishery processing, we run a seafood restaurant, Enyadotto-Maru, as our restaurant business.

Tsunokake：It's impressive that you also operate a restaurant. Do you have any particular reason why you manage the restaurant business?

Shimizu：We want to meet our customers face to face. Most of our fishery processing is done in a factory behind the scenes and delivered to markets such as Toyosu Market in Tokyo, so our business has very little chance of directly seeing our customer's faces. I don't want to do my job at a point but want to do it in various aspects. If you hear your customer say, "It's good!" that would be our reward. That is the reason we started working in the restaurant business.

Tsunokake：The customer's encouraging response would be the best motivation.

Shimizu：Now I'm glad we started our restaurant project because we have a direct connection with the consumers even though we are just an ingredient producer.

Tsunokake：You have won the Food Hygiene Association Chairman Award and Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Minister Award. These are the proof of your quality, I suppose.

Shimizu：One of the reasons we wanted to win these awards was the publicity outside of our quality assurance, but the main reason was to increase the employee's motivation.

Tsunokake：You mean these awards weren't just for the outside publicity?

Shimizu：That is right. We tried to win the awards to make our employees proud of their work, and find that the products they are processing are so great that they won the official recognition.

Tsunokake： It is a great intention to think of the actual workplace and take the initiative to work for your employees.