Once hugely popular for its "all items priced at 270 yen," the izakaya chain "Kin no Kura" now has only one store left. What's the reason? A thorough analysis based on interviews with the restaurant's president and the restaurant's owner

In the mid-2010s, when I was a university student, I would almost always see the yellow sign of "Kin no Kura" when I walked around the terminal stations of Shinjuku and Shibuya. Although they were no longer promoting the "270 yen flat rate" at that time, they were still a standard large box store...