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The story
Kura Sushi announced that, as an apology for canceling its collaboration campaign with the popular character “Chiikawa,” it would offer a 10% discount at checkout starting the following day. On 5ch’s “Everything Live (Galileo)” board, users questioned the response, pointing out that the discount can’t be applied automatically at self-checkout registers and only kicks in if a customer tells a staff member about it, and that it applies not just to customers who actually lost out by visiting during the collaboration period, but also to brand-new customers who haven’t even been there yet. The thread split between commenters saying “Isn’t Kura Sushi just the one coming out ahead here?” and others defending the move as “a reasonable response to the backlash.”
What people said
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Customer: 'Well then, guess I'm going to Kura Sushi.'
So then it's not self-checkout anymore — staff have to handle it.
Hey, frontline workers lol — 'you guys deal with it' lol lol
There's a lot of half-baked campaigns like this.
Probably because you look like the type who'd like Chiikawa.
Sushiro's supposedly near the top of the tier list, though I've never been.
Maybe this whole 'conveyor belt sushi' concept will just disappear at this rate.
There wasn't really anything like it to begin with anyway.
What did Gatten Sushi even do wrong?
If you think about it calmly, Kura Sushi is just the one profiting here.
Thinking about it calmly, this is hilarious (lit. 'grass is growing' — Japanese net slang for LOL).
It's just a business opportunity dressed up as damage control.
That's being pointed out on Yahoo comments and X too — like, the people who actually lost out by going to Kura Sushi for the Chiikawa collab are the ones who got burned, so why are new customers who are about to go from now on getting the 10% discount?
Such a great SDGs move, huh 👏 (sarcastic jab at using 'sustainability' to justify offloading leftover stock)
If you don't come, that's on you for refusing to accept the apology, got it?
How exactly are you supposed to compensate customers who don't show up?
And this is the same day they made the announcement, right?
Putting the self-checkout settings aside, a normal company would think hard about how to apply the discount fairly to all customers and come up with a real solution.
An incompetent company is the kind that just quietly makes it an 'ask-and-you'll-get-it' system as a cheap workaround.
Well then how exactly are you supposed to apply a discount at a self-checkout register?
It's precisely because they have to treat people fairly that it's NOT limited to only the people who lost out.
If they gave the discount to people who didn't even go to Kura Sushi during the collab period, wouldn't the people who actually lost out see that as unfair?
Your whole premise is off.
This should be an apology for betraying customers' trust, and that applies to ALL customers.
And if they tried to limit the discount to people who specifically went for the Chiikawa collab, they'd have to require proof like a receipt — and it's obvious that would blow up when people say 'I don't have that anymore.' So in the end, from a risk-management standpoint, the best option is to just make it apply to all customers.
It's because people like you are up in Kura Sushi's management that they pull dumb moves like this.
I want a refund even without a receipt.
Wasn't the trust betrayed specifically for the people who came to Kura Sushi during the collab period and lost out?
There's no one who wouldn't want it…
It's not that there's literally no one — I can see someone saying 'I didn't lose anything, so why am I getting compensated?'
Exactly right.
The people who went purely for the Chiikawa collab are the only real victims here — everyone else has nothing to do with it.
Well, this one's about apologizing for canceling the Chiikawa collab partway through, so it's a separate issue from apologizing to those people.
Some mysterious breed of people who get furious over something that doesn't even affect them.
The Kato Junichi style, huh? (a popular Japanese streamer known for cynical, detached commentary on other people's outrage)
Are you complaining without having gone?
Sorry, honestly I haven't been in like 5 years.
But jumping on the bandwagon to pile on during a controversy is just the Japanese way, you get it, right?
That's just what Kenmomen do. (users of 5ch's News Plus board, stereotyped as cynical armchair critics)
Honestly I just kind of hope as many people as possible end up out on the street or get arrested.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
When a company chooses a “flat discount for all customers” as its response to backlash, the reasoning is often risk management — narrowing down who qualifies risks inviting fresh accusations of unfairness. In this case too, applying a uniform discount at self-checkout was technically difficult, so it was left to staff discretion, which ironically created a new sense of murkiness, with only customers who spoke up actually benefiting. Within the thread, opinions split between those calling for individual compensation for customers who genuinely lost out when the collaboration was canceled, and those who saw a blanket discount for all customers as a reasonable gesture of apology, with no clear consensus reached. Note that details regarding the cause of the collaboration’s cancellation and the parties involved remain unconfirmed and mixed with speculation, so this article sticks to what can be verified.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Everything Live/Galileo board) thread “[Sad News] Kura Sushi Starting to Smell Like a Scam.”
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