Chapter 13: Two Schools of Management, One Kitchen
From Tanegashima to the World — Chapter 13.
← Chapter 12: Croissants, an Envelope, and the Sunday My Account Turned Red · Series overview
In this chapter of his founder series, Mitsuhiro Yashio reflects on what 1,000-year-old apprentice kitchens can teach a global rice-food brand built for the 21st century. The three principles he writes about — After you, Kaizen for you, Global Good — are now the cultural foundation of every Otogo store and every Otogo OS module.
Chapter 13: Two Schools of Management, One Kitchen
At Otogo, we run on three management principles.
After you (利他の心). Think of the other person first.
Kaizen for you (お客様のための改善). Improve relentlessly, but always for the guest.
Global Good (世界に出して恥ずかしくない安全な食). Serve food we can be proud to deliver to anyone, anywhere in the world.
These three didn’t come from a business book. They came from Yachiyo, our very first restaurant in Sydney, the place where we learned almost everything we know about running a business.
At the Yachiyo sushi counter, on any given night, you’d find presidents of listed Japanese companies sitting across from me, sharing sake, telling stories. Some of the most expensive management consulting in the world was being handed to me for the price of a glass of junmai. They taught me that management is not a system. Management is the residue of how you treat the person in front of you, repeated ten thousand times.
But before Yachiyo, before Sydney, there was Kyoto.
The Kaiseki House
I trained in a Kyoto kaiseki restaurant. Kaiseki is the high art of Japanese cuisine, the cuisine the tea masters built around silence, seasons, and one-gram precision. My master had held two Michelin stars in his career. There was no Michelin Guide for Kyoto when I trained, but the standards were already brutal, because the standards weren’t invented by Michelin. They were invented by 400 years of tea ceremony, and the master simply enforced them.
Mornings started at 7 a.m. We finished at 1 a.m. There was a dormitory above the kitchen. By the time I’d showered, I’d collapse into sleep. 6:30 a.m., back up. 7 a.m., back in.
During the New Year osechi season, I worked three days almost without sleep. I have a clear memory of grilling squid over an open flame, the warm air on my face making me drift off, and being shouted awake.
One day off per month. By the time you’d done your laundry and cleaned your room, half the day was gone. For almost five years, I never had what I’d call “rest.”
And the work itself left no room for shortcuts. When the master said “ten grams of sashimi,” he meant 10g, with a tolerance of one gram. Tempura was not watched, it was listened to. The sound told you the moment the water inside the prawn had cooked off. Grilled fish was pulled from the heat early so the residual warmth from the plate would finish it. After everyone had gone home, somebody still had to stir the nukadoko, the fermented rice bran bed for pickles. Skip a night and it spoils. They say the pickles taste different depending on whose hands stir the bed.
The pay was 75,000 yen a month, dorm included. In my time there, about 30 young cooks passed through. Only three of us, including me, lasted longer than six months.
But Kyoto Wasn’t Only Demanding
A young man arrived once. He had failed every job interview, lost his place to live, and was on the edge of homelessness. The master took him in. Gave him a futon in the dorm. Fed him. Put him to work. No lecture, no terms.
That was also Kyoto management.
Demanding and generous at the same time. Watching people closely, learning their patterns, refining your work until it became your work and not your master’s. That is exactly what every founder I have ever respected does.
And Then, Modern Management
Modern management is something else entirely.
Quarterly OKRs. 1:1 cadences. Diversity. The manager’s job reframed as growing the person, not extracting from them. If a team member doesn’t grow, increasingly the system asks what the manager failed to do.
It has its own shadows. Relationships thinned to numbers, dashboards replacing eye contact. AI is now beginning to manage human KPIs directly. Some of that is good. Some of it I am watching carefully.
Old Kyoto management produced a depth of focus and devotion the modern playbook cannot manufacture. Modern management produces a kind of dignity and compounding human growth the old apprentice system never permitted. Both are true. Both have a cost.
What I’m Trying to Build at Otogo
For Otogo to become the global QSR for the four billion people who eat rice every day, the management system has to be something neither pure-Kyoto nor pure-Silicon-Valley.
It has to be Kyoto in spirit. Observe the person in front of you. Love them enough to demand their best. Let kodawari, an almost stubborn devotion to detail, mean something again.
And it has to be modern in structure. Measurable goals. Psychological safety. Compounding growth for every person. AI doing the heavy KPI lifting so humans can do the human work.
This is why our three principles, After you, Kaizen for you, Global Good, sit above every system, every OS, every store we open. They are the answer to the question:
When the system meets a person, who wins?
At Otogo, the person wins. The system serves the person.
A question to anyone building a company today
The apprentice world held a depth of devotion that is almost extinct. Modern systems make growth available to everyone, fairly. Both are real. Both matter.
If you are designing the management culture of a company that has to scale globally without losing its soul, how would you take the best of both?
Building the Next Otogo, With You
The flagship at Town Hall stands today because twelve people chose to wait for it. Chapter 12 ended there, at the end of the past chapters.
This is the first of the chapters about the future.
What we are building now is a brand whose every store, every operating decision, and every line of code in Otogo OS sits under three words: After you, Kaizen for you, Global Good. That is the operating system we want our Founder Partners to inherit, not a manual, but a way of choosing who wins when the system meets a person.
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
→ Join the conversation on LinkedIn
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