Each time I’m in Tokyo and I see a Schmatz restaurant, I think about the wonderful story of the two men behind the plethora of stores in Japan.
It began when Marc Luetten and partner Christopher Ax, two guys who grew up in Hamburg and would later meet in New York. Working in the venture capital industry, Luetten who love food and Japan figured to give starting a German sausage and beer food truck in Tokyo.
The guys bought air mattresses in Don Quixote, lived at a friend’s Naga-Meguro warehouse and purchased a used food truck on Craigslist.
This was back in 2013.
Who knew that this food truck would lead to a restaurant chain of several dozen.
The guys found a way to capitalize on the German restaurant theme but unlike other German restaurants in Tokyo, they wanted to bring a more modern vibe to it and so, they opened their first restaurant in Akasaka in 2015.
And have a goal to grow it to over a hundred.
Their story is no doubt one of the greatest success and I mean that, considering I have friends who have created restaurants in Tokyo and while they were able to grow prior to the pandemic, they lost their restaurants not long after.
And one thing that Luetten and Ax have talked about is having wonderful investors who are with them in the long term. And that’s very important.
But they learned a lot from the ups and downs through growing their business. But one of the major attractions is the beer… giving Japanese the chance to drink different types of German beer (which is amazing considering a lot of Japanese locations tend to focus on local craft beer).
And now they are focusing on building their international beer brand.
I was in Japan before Schmatz partnered with the Bavarian breweries, so it’s something that I look forward to when I visit Naka-Meguro again (they are in many locations, but Naka-Meguro is the restaurant I want to come back to!). Can’t wait!
