Japanese curry restaurant operator Ichibanya said on Monday first-half operating profit fell 17 per cent, as higher rice and ingredient costs squeezed margins even as the country's two-year rice-price spike begins to recede.

Operating profit for the six months to 31 August fell to ¥2.09bn ($13.2mn) from ¥2.53bn a year earlier, the owner of the CoCo Ichibanya chain said in a filing to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Sales rose 10 per cent to ¥35.2bn ($222mn), but the operating margin narrowed to 5.9 per cent from 7.9 per cent. Net profit attributable to shareholders fell 21 per cent to ¥1.1bn.

The yellow-signed storefront of a Curry House CoCo Ichibanya restaurant in Kasugai, Aichi prefecture, with a red takeaway-ordering banner by the entrance

The company blamed "the rise in food-ingredient purchase prices, starting with rice," as well as higher logistics costs, according to the filing.

Ichibanya left its full-year forecast unchanged, guiding to operating profit of ¥5bn for the year to February 2027, a rise of 6 per cent, implying it expects its rice bill to ease in the second half.

Same-store sales at its 1,205 domestic CoCo Ichibanya outlets rose 2.4 per cent. Customer numbers were flat, with the gain coming entirely from a 2.5 per cent rise in spending per customer after higher-priced limited-time menus and promotional tie-ins with the virtual-idol group Hololive and a Chiikawa animated film.

RICE PRICES RECEDING

Retail rice in Tokyo averaged ¥865 a kilogram in August, the ninth consecutive monthly fall and down from a peak of ¥1,090 in November 2025, according to FAO price data accessed via Cropli. It remained about 50 per cent above the ¥574 of two years earlier.

[explore layer="prices" price="ds:101786" pto="2026-10-06" title="Tokyo retail rice price, 2020–2026" subtitle="Non-glutinous rice, yen per kilogram, monthly average to August 2026 — down nine months running from the November 2025 peak. Source: FAO GIEWS"]

The US Department of Agriculture's attaché in Tokyo said on 30 September that Japanese rice prices were "projected to decline significantly from the historical highs observed through 2024 and 2025," with the 2026/27 harvest rebounding from a slump two years ago.

The government sold 590,000 tonnes of rice from state reserves between March and September 2025 to rein in shelf prices.