On Sept. 10, hundreds of people lined up from 8 a.m. at the Matsuzakaya Ueno department store in Tokyo, hoping to buy tickets for 551 HORAI’s meat buns. The Osaka specialty appears only at the autumn food fair and many customers were willing to wait four hours just to hold a hot box of buns in their hands, Yahoo reported.
Some social media users commented that the wait was so long they could as well have taken a round-trip Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka or flown.
But the people who endured the queue insisted that the 250-yen bun (US$1.60), with its sweet dough, melting meat filling, and curls of rising steam, was a wonderful experience, according to Shueishathe news and media platform operated by the Japanese publishing giant Shueisha.
Behind the hype for 551 HORAI’s buns is a 150-minute barrier the company itself has set.
On its website, it states that it does not operate stores outside the Kansai region.
It has around 60 stores across Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama and Shiga, selling 170,000 buns a day.
All of the dough is prepared at a bakery in Osaka, then trucked out two to four times a day. Staying under 150 minutes in transit is the golden window for the dough to complete its first fermentation cycle. Travel any longer, and the dough over-ferments, changing its aroma, its rise, and ruining the texture.
Even though modern transport infrastructure would allow for longer routes, the company holds to this rule as a safeguard against traffic jams or highway accidents. Its trucks run a fixed four trips a day.
According to Toyo Keizai, to manage quality at each store, incoming dough is sorted into three categories by how long it’s been in transit: “Sugu” (used about an hour after preparation), “Futsu” (about two hours) and “Osae” (three hours or more). Staff check the dough’s firmness by hand, since the pace of fermentation shifts with the day’s temperature and humidity.
551 HORAI specifies that the filling combines pork shoulder, thigh and belly with onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, soy sauce and sugar. Each bun weighs 130 grams: 70 grams of dough, 60 grams of filling.
All 170,000 buns sold each day are wrapped by hand. A skilled worker can wrap one bun in about 15 seconds.
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A 551 HORAI meat bun. Photo courtesy of Hoshinoresort |
Within the company, buns that meet a standard are known as “beauty buns”, filling centered, correct weight, and a skin folded into 12 to 13 even pleats.
Every five years, the company holds the “Bijin Butan-man Grand Prix”, a wrapping contest where some of its top artisans can wrap a single bun in just 7.5 seconds.
Every store performs its cooking live, in full view of customers. The practice builds trust and helps distract diners from the wait. While selling, staff must also watch the length of the queue to calculate how many buns need to go into the steamer 20 minutes ahead.
For trade fairs held beyond the 150-minute driving radius, the company sends out an event team. These staff stay in local hotels and start work at 5 a.m., kneading dough and steaming buns on site.
551 HORAI was founded in 1946 in Osaka by Taiwanese founder Luo Bang-Qiang. The “55” in its name was inspired by another brand, while the “1” was meant to assert top quality. Rather than chase profit or scale, the company has chosen to hold onto its values. The discipline in protecting the 150-minute rule and handcraft tradition has turned an everyday bun into a culinary icon, as noted by OCEANS.