Chapter 12: Croissants, an Envelope, and the Sunday My Account Turned Red
From Tanegashima to the World — Chapter 12.
← Chapter 11: 6 Weeks, 12 Staff, and the Decision That Built Town Hall · Series overview
Chapter 12: Croissants, an Envelope, and the Sunday My Account Turned Red
If you missed Chapter 11 — I had taken on a Council-leased site for Otogo’s first flagship in the Sydney CBD. The lease signing had stalled. The bank wouldn’t release my equipment loan until January. I had 12 staff, 6 weeks of cash, and a promise to myself: no layoffs.
I had chosen to protect the people.
What I hadn’t yet figured out was how.
This is the story of the month between the decision and the day Town Hall finally opened.
The Discipline of Stillness
I am a chef. I open restaurants. I do not sit.
So I went to the empty Town Hall space every morning at 7:30am and worked until 9:00pm. Concrete shell. Raw walls. No kitchen. No sink. I did what I could with what I had — fitout coordination, back-of-house planning, supplier briefings. Anything to keep moving.
Cash kept thinning. The smiles in my staff’s faces, and my family’s, kept thinning with it.
As for me — I gave up alcohol. I gave up golf.
I needed to tell the team, without speeches, that I was steady.
Leaders don’t talk about staying steady. They show it.
You cannot hold a team together with words during a month like that. You hold them together by being the first person at the empty site every morning and the last person to leave at night. By choosing the smaller version of yourself, so the larger version of the brand has room to arrive.
The Second Delay Nobody Warned Me About
The second week of January came.
I called the bank on Monday.
The banker, just back from holiday, said he needed time. By Friday, he called back: “By next Monday, it will be done.”
It wasn’t.
It was done the following week — and that’s when I learned there were two bankers on the file. The second one had just left for Chinese New Year. Two more weeks.
In my experience, “two weeks” is never two weeks. Once a banker comes back, the review still takes a while.
So I started cutting.
There was no kitchen on site, so I had been buying cheap lunches in the CBD on my way to the fitout each morning. Now I bought a single croissant from Woolworths and split it across three days.
Dinner I left alone. I didn’t want my family to feel any of this.
I never cried during this period. The feeling wasn’t sadness. It was closer to this:
If I climb this hill, something good is waiting at the top. If I fall, the only direction left is up.
The Envelope from Toshi-san
In mid-February, my friend Toshi-san — who runs Toshiya in Cremorne — came to see me. A supplier had told him I was struggling with the opening.
We sat with a glass of water and caught up.
Then he slid an envelope across the table.
“This is for the water I drank today. If the shop opens and does well, come back and return it. No interest. I trust you.”
For the first time since arriving in Sydney 17 years earlier, I almost cried.
I refused, of course. He wouldn’t take it back.
So I told him: “I’ll keep this in my bag. If the shop never opens and I have to declare bankruptcy, I’ll use it for the kids.”
I never opened the envelope. I returned it to him months later, still sealed.
Before returning it, I finally opened it.
There was A$10,000 inside — and a short letter.
The letter ended with three words.
「負けるな、みっちゃん。」 (Roughly: “Don’t lose, Micchan.”)
That letter is still in my drawer today.
A friendship like that does not appear in any spreadsheet. But it is the kind of resource that decides whether a brand survives or not.
Seven Leaks and One Opening Day
Chinese New Year ended. The second banker came back. The review took another full week.
Mid-February became late February. The November opening was already months behind.
The moment the equipment loan was released, I called the fitout team. Two more weeks of work.
We had no cash left for a soft launch. So we agreed:
— Wednesday: free food day + kitchen test. — Thursday: closed, refine. — Friday: open.
On Monday and Tuesday I worked from 7:30am to 3:00am.
On Wednesday at noon, water started pouring out of seven separate locations in the store.
The plumber I had used for the first time hadn’t done his job properly. Water leaked into the basement of the building. We were forced to close.
On Thursday we did the free food day and the test kitchen. On Friday, we opened. The food came out late, but we opened.
For the first time in months, I slept.
Saturday was quiet — Otogo wasn’t on the CBD’s radar yet. A good day for small adjustments.
Sunday morning at 6:00am, my wife woke me.
She showed me the bank account.
It had turned red. Below zero.
Friday’s revenue would land on Monday. If I could just hold today — Sunday — Monday’s money would land and the wheel would start turning again.
We held.
Barely. But we held.
The Tail of Something Bigger
From that point, Otogo started moving.
Some days, we sold over 1,000 onigiri before 2:00pm.
A few months later, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food featured Otogo as one of the Sydney CBD lunches worth heading into the office for.
For a moment, I let myself think it.
“Did we just catch a glimpse of McDonald’s tail?”
But it was just a glimpse. The brand still needed sharpening. The systems still needed refining. The team still needed building.
There is a Japanese saying. A drop of water, falling on stone, every day.
雨垂れ石を穿つ.
The stone never feels much. But one day, it has a hole in it.
Otogo moves like water. One step at a time.
What a Brand Actually Is
The flagship at Town Hall stands today because twelve people chose to wait for it.
Because one friend handed me a sealed envelope.
Because my family didn’t ask why my lunch had become one-third of a croissant while dinner stayed normal.
That is what a brand actually is.
Not a logo. Not a menu. Not a storefront.
A brand is what the people around you choose to stay for.
You can hire a designer for the logo. You can write the menu in an afternoon. You can build the storefront in eight weeks if you are willing to paint the walls yourself.
But the part of a brand that actually lasts is built by people choosing to stay when there is no good reason to.
That part you cannot buy.
The End of the Past Chapters
This is the end of the past chapters.
From here, the story of Otogo is the story of what we are building now — not what we already built. The machines. The 90-second kitchen. The DX work behind the counter. The way a Founder Partner can take this model and stand it up in a new city, with their hands, their savings, and their people.
That is the story I want to write next.
If you have read all twelve chapters — from a small island called Tanegashima, to a tea-pouring boy in California, to a Kyoto kitchen at 18, to a closed door in New York, to Yachiyo in Sydney, to a franchise lesson, to a daughter’s question, to the vision found in the middle of a war, to are we eating well?, to 1,000 onigiri and a mountain of problems, to a Council that wouldn’t sign, to a Sunday morning with a red bank account —
— thank you.
The next chapters are about the future.
Building the Next Otogo, With You
The flagship at Town Hall stands today because twelve people chose to wait for it.
That is also why Otogo’s expansion model now uses Founder Partners — not standard franchisees, not employees. We are looking for people who will build the next Otogo the way we built this one: with their hands, with their savings, with their people, and with the willingness to choose what is right when the spreadsheet says otherwise.
If “rice as the next global QSR category” is the thought you keep returning to —
Three Founder Partner seats are open for 2026.
→ View the Founder Partner program
→ Read Mitsu’s full chapter on Substack
← Chapter 11: 6 Weeks, 12 Staff, and the Decision That Built Town Hall