Photo/Illutration A winter menu item served at Tendon Tenya features crab and pufferfish with soba noodles. (Provided by Royal Holdings Co.)

With rice prices still high, moves to promote soba, barley and pasta have spread across the restaurant and supermarket industries to win over cost-conscious consumers.

The Tendon Tenya restaurant chain is strongly pushing soba noodle-based dishes, including in set meals combined with tempura rice bowls.

The strategy is intended to offset the high cost of rice used in its mainstay tempura rice bowls while increasing the average spending of customers.

“Price increases for ingredients leave us no choice but to sometimes pass on the costs to menu prices,” Masataka Abe, president of Royal Holdings Co., which operates the chain, said on Nov. 17. “We will also work on proposing different products.”

At Summit Inc., a supermarket chain in the Tokyo metropolitan area, rice sale volumes are shrinking while demand is increasing for more-affordable pasta, bread and rice noodles.

The company is “actively promoting these products,” said President Tetsuya Hattori.

Convenience stores are also taking action.

Lawson Inc. has increased barley procurement by 20 percent compared with the previous fiscal year to strengthen its lineup of “onigiri with barley.”

The company sees barley as more price stable than rice, and it aligns with health-conscious trends.

Consumer demand is strong for the lower-priced barley onigiri items, the company said.

“We will further increase barley procurement,” Fumiki Mizushima, general manager overseeing ready-to-eat meals at Lawson’s product division, said. “We are also preparing to expand the variety of bread and noodles, which are expected to meet demand as substitutes for rice.”

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