The fifth generation president of Umenoyado Sake Brewery, changed the passive culture.
SAKE brewery also changing from a top-down to a team.
The fifth generation president of Umenoyado Sake Brewery, changed the passive culture.
Yoshida Kayo, the fifth generation president of Umenoyado Sake Brewery, has striven to create a comfortable working environment and eliminated the dependency on individuals in sake brewing. Umenoyado Sake Brewery (Katsuragi City, Nara Prefecture), founded in 1893, is known for its Umeshu “Aragoshi Series” that contains fruit pulp, and has an annual production volume of about 2 million liters. Since becoming president in 2013, fifth generation Yoshida Kayo (45) has set the goal of “From family business to company,” clarifying bonus standards, introducing job rotation, improving school allowances, and increasing motivation through evaluation sheets. Sake brewing has also changed from a top-down approach that relied on a single Toji (Master of Sake brewery) to a team system, abolishing overnight shifts, and achieving stable quality and efficiency by making full use of data. The passive culture has changed, the number of employees has increased significantly, and the company is on a growth trajectory.
Expanding from sake to Umeshu
Umenoyado Sake Brewery’s own brand of sake, “Umenoyado,” has long been popular. As sake consumption increased nationwide during the period of high economic growth, the brewery shifted its focus to selling the sake to major sake brewery called “Barrel Sales” and sales grew.
However, as sake consumption peaked in 1974 and began to decline, sales from Barrel Sales gradually declined as well. Yoshida’s father, Akatsuki, the fourth generation brewer, became president around that time and focused again on brewing and selling the brewery’s own brand of Ginjo sake. With the Ginjo sake boom also helping, the brewery was once described as an “up-and-coming Ginjo brewery” by a specialist sake magazine.
Akatsuki also obtained licenses to manufacture liqueurs and shochu, and in 2002 began selling Umeshu made with sake. This was a huge hit, and initially sold out for two consecutive years. After that, they also commercialized sake-based liqueurs such as yuzu and peach, as well as slightly sparkling alcohol, which became popular. Currently, the company offers 45 types of sake and liqueurs in Japan.
From the general affairs department of a trading company to the sake brewery
For Yoshida, the Umenoyado Sake Brewery brewery, which was adjacent to his home, was a place of play and learning.
Loved by the employees working at the brewery, Yoshida had hoped to join the family business someday. However, when her younger brother, who is seven years younger than her, was born, she saw her relatives rejoicing that “a successor had been born,” and thought that her brother would eventually take over the business.
After graduating from the Faculty of Business and Information at Tezukayama University (Nara City), she joined a medical trading company. She had hoped to join the sales department, but was assigned to the general affairs department. Yoshida was feeling down inside, but his boss at the time encouraged her by saying, “General affairs is an important job, like internal sales.”
These words changed Yoshida’s mind, and she worked to create an environment and systems in which the company’s more than 1,000 employees could work comfortably.
After about two and a half years, Akatsuki asked her if she wanted to come back, and so she joined the family business in 2004. At first, Yoshida was busy learning sales work for department stores and liquor stores, but as she began to see the bigger picture of the brewery, she realized that Umenoyado Sake Brewery was not necessarily an easy place to work.
Using her experience from her previous job, Yoshida began to improve the employee benefits system and improved health checkups.
Although she directly expressed her desire to become president…
Yoshida, who had devoted herself to improving the company’s environment and sales, gradually began to want to take over Umenosuku Sake Brewery herself. However, at the time, it was tacitly understood that her younger brother would eventually take over, which worried Yoshida.
Then one day, Yoshida was impressed by something the lecturer said at a management seminar she attended with Akatsuki.
“For a leader, not making a decision is the biggest sin.”
Yoshida began to think, “By not deciding whether to take over or not, I’m causing trouble for my father and those around me. If I want to be a leader, I should make a decision.”
One day in 2007, he made up his mind and appealed to Akatsuki, “I want to become president someday.” However, Akatsuki did not agree, and told Yoshida, “I understand your feelings. I will hand over the presidency when I think I have the leadership skills to develop the company. But if you don’t have the ability, you may not take over.”
Yoshida was moved to tears by Akatsuki’s words. It was not because he was upset. It was because he was moved by Akatsuki’s thinking of prioritizing his responsibilities to Umenoyado Shuzo over fulfilling his daughter’s wishes.
“I understand. I think that’s a natural way of thinking,” Yoshida replied, and he began to think about the big picture and long-term perspective, placing the development of the company first.
Challenging the industry hierarchy
Around this time, Umenoyado Sake Brewery released “Aragoshi Umeshu” in 2005, a paste made from plum pulp mixed into a plum liquor. The product, which was inspired by the company’s concerns about how to dispose of plum pulp that was being generated as industrial waste, became a huge hit. They then launched a liquor mixed with mandarin orange, yuzu, and other fruit pulp, which also became popular.
Yoshida, who was in sales at the time, worked hard to sell to retailers and other outlets. In the 10 years since the launch of Arasoshi Umeshu, Umenoyado Sake Brewery’s sales have increased nearly fivefold.
Umenoyado Sake Brewery’s business structure has also changed significantly. In 2003, the year after the company began selling plum liquor, 83% of sales were sake and 12% were liqueurs, including plum liquor. Today, however, liqueurs account for 86% of sales and sake for 7%.
The company’s success has sometimes led to jealousy from other companies in the industry. At a meeting that Yoshida attended herself, the managers of other sake breweries told her, “Don’t just make umeshu, make good sake too.”
Many sake breweries were struggling financially, and she heard people say, “If they try their hand at umshu, Umenoyado will be the next to go under.”
Yoshida recalls, “There is an invisible hierarchy in the sake brewing industry, and many people think that sake is at the top and liqueurs are far below. But when I go to a tasting event for plum wine and other liqueurs, the expressions of delight on the customers’ faces are the same as for sake. I realized that what people want is ‘delicious alcohol.'”
However, it was also true that some employees were concerned about such external opinions. For this reason, they expanded their sake business in addition to liqueurs, clearly positioning it as the “two pillars” of their business. They continue to try test brewing of sake other than their own brand, Umenoyado.
Yoshida was asked to take over as president at age 33
In June 2012, the year before the 120th anniversary of the company’s founding, Yoshida was called by Akatsuki and told without any warning, “Next year, I’ll hand over Umenoyado to you.”
At the time, Yoshida was 33 years old. She was pregnant with her first son, but she immediately responded, “I understand. I’ll work even harder.”
Akatsuki did not tell Yoshida the reason for his appointment. However, Yoshida feels that Akatsuki appreciated the fact that since joining the company, she has proactively taken on various new challenges and has been able to get senior executives who have been with the company for a long time involved in moving the business forward.
Due to the growth caused by the hit product, many young employees joined the company at this time, the average age of the entire workforce became younger, and many of the managers were the same generation as Yoshida. Akatsuki was still 65 years old and in perfect health at the time, but due to these changes, it seems that he thought it would be best to hand over the baton early.
Yoshida gave birth in December 2012 and returned to work after a period of maternity leave. She was appointed president in July 2013 as planned.
Akatsuki was appointed chairman without representative authority, but after that she had little say in management.
Reforms aimed at “from family business to corporation”
After becoming president, she set the theme “from family business to corporation.” She decided to aim for a “company” that would attract diverse talent and allow young people to continue working for the company for a long time.
First, the year after she became president, she introduced a rule that all employees’ bonuses must be funded by 10% of operating profits.
she believes this measure prompted employees to think about how they could increase profits.
He also introduced a system of “evaluation sheets” that would add points to employees’ own suggestions and proactive efforts in various projects, such as new product development.
Yoshida was appointed president at the same time as she gave birth to and raised her eldest son. She has particularly strengthened support for families with children. In 2019, a system was introduced whereby the school allowance for employees with children increases each time their child advances to higher education. For example, if a child is a university student, 20,000 yen per month is paid. Male employees are also encouraged to take parental leave.
By implementing job rotation transfers within five years as a rule, we have avoided the “personalization” of work and have created an environment where it is easy to take maternity and childcare leave. We have also taken care to ensure that the personnel system itself is gender equal.
As a result of these efforts, in recent years, almost all female employees have returned to work after parental leave, and the average number of births among married employees has risen to 2.3.
Abolishing the Toji system and digitizing the process
We have also made changes to the “Toji system,” which we thought was incompatible with work style reform.
The toji, who is responsible for production, comes to the brewery to work from the rice harvest in autumn until spring to make sake. During the peak season of sake brewing, he stays overnight with the other craftsmen and works without rest, which Yoshida felt was out of step with the times.
Another issue was the “dependency on individual skills/expertise” of maintaining quality by relying on the toji’s many years of experience to control the taste and aroma that change with the fermentation state. If the same quality of sake could not be made if the toji were to leave, this would not fit with the times from the perspective of sustainability.
So Yoshida decided to “graduate” from the toji system in 2017.
First, she chose three full-time employees who had worked at Umenosuku Sake Brewery for a long time to replace the toji as production managers, and changed the system so that decisions were made by a team rather than a top-down approach like the toji. She instructed the three to carry out reforms to completely eliminate overnight shifts for the craftsmen involved in sake brewing.
The three digitized the processes involved in sake brewing, from washing the rice to pasteurization and fermentation time. The techniques passed down from the toji were also compiled into a manual, allowing for consistent sake brewing no matter who made it.
The tanks, steamers, and other equipment were also replaced with the latest models, allowing for both stable quality and increased work efficiency. This enabled a work style that allowed employees to take days off and breaks even during peak brewing times. Overnight shifts were also completely eliminated in July 2018.
“In addition to the change in work style, the awareness of completing sake brewing within limited working hours has also spread. In the past, everything was decided top-down by the toji, leaving no room for the craftsmen to think, but now everyone in the manufacturing department independently brings ideas for improvements and makes decisions together through discussion.”
Employee numbers have grown 1.4-fold
Umenoyado Sake Brewery has 72 employees (as of November 2024), a 1.4-fold increase from 53 in 2013, when Yoshida became president. Yoshida feels that the company is making the transition from a family business to a corporation while maintaining the benefits of being a family business.
“The homey atmosphere that I loved since I joined the company is still the same. On the other hand, I feel that the conservative culture and passive attitude of employees that are common in traditional industries has been replaced by a more adventurous culture where everyone is free-spirited and proactive. We want to continue to evolve, aiming to become a ‘corporation’ that represents the sake brewing industry.”
