When I was named president of NISSIN FOOD PRODUCTS in 2015, I began my tenure under the slogan, Beyond Instant Foods in conjunction with challenging ourselves to become a Century Brand Company. The slogan signaled our intent to search for new businesses. Given the population declines in Japan, it is difficult to imagine that the instant noodles market will continue to grow in our nation. Creating new businesses is essential for the sustainable growth of NISSIN FOOD PRODUCTS. Beyond Instant Foods expresses our commitment to reach beyond existing businesses, creating new food cultures through our own efforts.

Japan has moved from the former era of food shortages and malnutrition to an era of food satiety, and we have essentially no concerns about food security. At the same time, however, new food and health challenges are emerging. These challenges include excessive calorie intake and hidden malnutrition. We also see many challenges when looking abroad, including the existence of so-called food deserts and trends toward excess calorie intake. Solutions to these many issues require a completely new approach.

Our goal is to create new food cultures through new businesses, fundamentally reframing perceptions of food value. Through reframing, we mean to remove existing frameworks and look at food from a different perspective, to provide new value by intentionally changing perceptions. A good example of reframing was when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and redefined the personal computer as a partner in creativity, rather than simply as a tool to make a businessperson more efficient. By shifting the target and customer experience for PCs, he succeeded in imparting new value to the product. The first iMac was a huge hit and laid the foundation for Apple’s continued prosperity to the present day.

We face a similar challenge in our goal to reframe food and health by creating new value that breaks with social paradigms and accepted norms. We know there is a tenacious prejudice that says instant foods are bad for health. Despite our consistent efforts to date, we have not completely dispelled this prejudice. We are attempting to overcome this negative image as rapidly as possible to create a new world view that instant foods can actually be the most healthy. Imagine a world in which everyone knows that the healthiest meal on earth is CUP NOODLES.

Other prejudices about maintaining good health call for suppressing one’s appetite or limiting intake. Living freely by eating according to one’s appetite has long been taboo, while good health and excessive appetite are considered at odds. The world we are trying to create is one in which people live according to their appetite for food, becoming healthier in the process. We want to reframe the relationship between food and health, offering solutions for achieving health that affirm the appetite without forcing behavioral changes.

The new business that resulted in KANZEN MEAL was an initiative to contribute to Human Well-being by taking on the challenges of modern food and reinventing the concept of healthy eating. The KANZEN MEAL brand strives for nutritional meals with a complete balance of flavor and all 33 nutrients prescribed by the Dietary Reference Intakes for the Japanese population. In other words, KANZEN MEAL pursues the perfect balance of taste and nutrition, offering deliciousness on par with any regular meal.

Now in its fourth year, this KANZEN MEAL series covers a wide range of food categories. All of the major staple food groups—rice, noodles, and bread—now have KANZEN MEAL counterparts. We forecast the KANZEN MEAL brand to be worth 10 billion yen by the end of FY 3/2026, as we continue to increase the number of touch points through which customers access this line of products.

One example in packaged food is the KANZEN MEAL CUP NOODLE SHIRUNASHI SEAFOOD NOODLES we launched in 2024. The development of this long-awaited KANZEN MEAL version of the CUP NOODLE brand highlights our strengths in product development that leverages brand power. The KANZEN MEAL lineup continues to expand across a wide range of products, including the KANZEN MEAL ANPAN, developed in collaboration with the long-established Kimuraya Sohonten bread company, and KANZEN MEAL KARAMUCHO, the KANZEN MEAL version of a snack food from NISSIN FOODS Group company KOIKE-YA. The FROZEN KANZEN MEAL DELI, a line of frozen foods available exclusively through our online shop, has been performing very well. As of July 2025, we offer 30 different products in this line, beginning with the launch of the FROZEN KANZEN MEAL DELI ONIGIRI in 2024. This product answered the food needs of modern women through rice ball innovation, successfully capturing a female demographic not entirely addressed through the categories at the time.

We are growing our BtoB business steadily in collaboration with retailers, providing base ingredients to convert boxed lunches and prepared foods sold by retailers into KANZEN MEAL products. At the same time, we are developing a corporate cafeteria business to provide KANZEN MEAL items to companies engaged in health management. The food service and catering industry is another channel we pursue actively. In addition to a collaboration with the Osaka Marriott Miyako Hotel and European Curry Aubergine, we are working on projects with family restaurants and pizza delivery chains. Further, Toyota Woven City, a smart city developed by Toyota Motor Corporation, will offer KANZEN MEAL menu options.

The NISSIN FOOD PRODUCTS efforts in marketing have succeeded in raising brand awareness and growing sales through three integrated strategies in which we excel: TV commercials (aerial combat), in-store sales promotions (ground combat), and social media (cyber combat). Moving ahead, the company intends to focus on social media, in-store communications, and retail media to foster a deeper understanding among customers of the nature of NISSIN products. We expect this push at the last mile before purchase to translate into sales growth.

Our new businesses have grown to the current state through investments of Group profits in line with the start-up nature of the businesses in question. However, these businesses are beginning to show indications of profitability. We aim to turn a profit for the corporate cafeteria business in FY 3/2027, for frozen foods in FY 3/2028, and for instant noodles and instant rice in FY 3/2029. At the same time, we target net sales of 42 billion yen (converted to market prices) by 2030, which represents net profits for multiple businesses in Japan.

Meanwhile, we intend to pursue expansion overseas. We are currently developing frozen products, instant noodles, instant rice, and other products for overseas markets. Having completed test sales in the U.S. in June, we plan to launch products across the country. We decided to start in the U.S. after conducting needs and consumer surveys in various countries and considering the advantages of existing sales networks. In the future, we envision further expansion into Europe and other regions.

The KANZEN MEAL Series

The NISSIN FOODS Group continues to grow steadily, posting record revenue and profits in FY 3/2025. At the same time, we question whether our employees are developing their personal talents sufficiently, as we are keenly aware of the danger of confusing the growth of the group with the growth of each individual.

One of the NISSIN 10 Rules, our code of conduct, is Strive for new experiences and wisdom. The future is bright for those who constantly challenge themselves. This philosophy reiterates the importance we place on self-improvement among new and young employees, as well as managers. We encourage individual growth by having employees design their own careers and think deeply about the kind of business person they want to become.

In parallel, our Organizational Human Resources Policy encourages each employee to engage in ambitious and autonomous career development. NISSIN ACADEMY is our in-house learning system, established in FY 3/2021. The academy provides selective development training for prospective leaders and position-based training for all employees, as well as a full range of open programs designed to support self-development. In April 2024, we launched the NISSIN DIGITAL ACADEMY, which specializes in digital reskilling, covering seven domains, 47 courses, and 90 lectures. Nearly one of every two domestic group employees (from non-manufacturing departments) has taken part in this program. More than 5,500 employees have participated as of this writing. Last autumn, we began a new human resources development program using a mandala chart. The mandala chart is the same tool baseball great Shohei Ohtani used in high school to chart his future. The tool allows the user to systematically organize and visualize the skills and mindset necessary to achieve personal goals, charted in goals and categories written across a nine-by-nine grid, with related elements and issues added around the grid. We believe this system will be an effective means of accelerating the autonomous growth of each employee.

Of course, good health is a prerequisite for giving one’s all in work and learning. We published our Declaration of Health and Productivity Management in 2018 to ensure our employees remain healthy. Over the six years until 2024, we established a solid occupational health system and strengthened related data analysis. We will never be able to achieve true Human Well-being without the health and growth of our employees.

Apple CEO Tim Cook once said that zooming out to the future and looking back, Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind will be related to health. Apple’s approach to health issues is to use devices and apps to monitor health status and predict disease. We, on the other hand, contribute to health in a completely different way. We use food technology as presymptomatic disease measures for fundamental solutions that reduce the risk of disease. I am prepared to take the lead in this area and blaze the way forward.

We do not know what the future holds. Perhaps we will reach the singularity when AI surpasses human capabilities, changing society and lives drastically. But no matter what comes, human beings will never stop eating and enjoying food. A world where people can eat as they desire and still be healthy—eating what and as much as they want. This is a reframing of the perception of food and health. We are creating a business that contributes to the fundamental well-being of humankind through eating.

We provide food that makes people healthier and happier in all scenarios, whether eating alone, at the table with family and friends, busy at work or on study breaks, as late-night snacks, or even dessert. And we will continue to take on the challenge of reframing the perception of food and health, not by creating foods that can also be “instant food,” but foods that are only possible as instant food.