Takuya Kishimoto is not your standard bakery owner.

The eccentric 46-year-old is dressed in layers of brightly colored clothes, a dapper hat and ostentatious sunglasses.

Kishimoto, who also sports long hair and a beard, said he dresses up in his flashy style out of a spirit of service.

“I change my clothes every time I see a different person,” he said. “I do so about three times a day. That’s because I want to make people happy.”

Kishimoto is known as the “godfather” of the curiously named bakeries offering fluffy loaves of luxury bread that have been popping up across Japan.

Among the unusual names are “Un Machigai Nai!” (Yes, you can count on it!), “Aseru Osama” (The king is fretting) and “Dondake Jikochu” (How self-centered).

The shop designs are also out of this world.

The bakeries’ signature bread loaves, which typically start around 900 yen ($7.81), have a distinctive sweet and melt-in-your-mouth quality to them. The flavors and the product lineups differ from one outlet to another.

“Just because you are offering delicious bread doesn’t mean that customers will come to you,” Kishimoto said. “The bakery business is a form of mass entertainment.”

Kishimoto styles himself as a “bakery producer.”

He offers a comprehensive consulting service to prospective bakery owners on how to look for properties, design their shops, develop products and serve customers.

He has helped open more than 200 outlets over two years, since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Most of his clients were newcomers to the bakery business.

“I am surprised to see that so many people shared in my passion,” he said.

Kishimoto started out as a hotel employee.

He was assigned to work for the food and drink division at a foreign-affiliated hotel, where he saw potential in varieties of bread that he came across through planning and marketing.

Kishimoto went independent and opened an upmarket bakery in Yokohama’s Okurayama district, home to a posh residential area, in 2006, when he was 30.

His mainstay articles were bread products with such a hard feel in the mouth that customers would strain their jaws from biting into them.

He pursued extreme perfection, using only the best varieties of wheat flour and mineral water products that went well with them.

Kishimoto’s shop caught the attention of enthusiasts and rose to fame, but customers gradually drifted away, pushing his business into a tight corner.

It was around that time that the director of a nearby day care center asked him if he could make “melon pan” sweet buns, shaped like a half-melon, and rolls. Both are considered run-of-the-mill bread varieties, a far cry from gastronomic perfection.

Kishimoto hesitated but eventually agreed.

Children at the nursery gushed about his bread products brought in while still hot from the oven. He was in tears before he knew it.

The experience convinced Kishimoto the best approach is to give people what they want.

“I changed my mind and decided I should ensure that my shop is loved by the neighborhood community,” he said.

Another turning point came in 2012, when Kishimoto visited Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, a town that had been devastated a year earlier by the tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Officials of an association had requested that he help open a bakery there. Rubble was still everywhere when he entered the site.

Taking local tastes into account, he decided to sell “koppe pan,” a type of bread like hot dog buns popular in the prefecture, with locally cooked delicatessen products held inside a cut.

Kishimoto hired local women and opened a bakery in Otsuchi in 2013. It was visited by a rush of customers, from children to elderly citizens.

He said the experience was fulfilling and taught him the power of flour.

It motivated him to set up Japan Bakery Marketing, a company that helps clients set up their own high-end bakeries.

In 2018, Kishimoto helped open “Kangaeta Hito Sugoiwa” (The one who thought this up is fabulous) in Kiyose, western Tokyo, the first of a series of bakeries specializing in luxury bread loaves.

The shop has won repeat customers and became a popular spot with lineups extending outside of the shop.

Kishimoto is not about to rest on his stylish laurels.

“I hope to set up shops that offer moving experiences in municipalities across Japan to enliven the communities there,” he said.