Food-service industry pioneer Skylark has family restaurants handling Japanese, Western and Chinese style cuisine such as Skylark, Gusto, Bamiyan, Yumean, etc. spread out all over the country. In order to deliver ingredients supplied on a global scale to our restaurants in a short time, factories have been established in various places by area.

In October 2001, we began looking for a possible site for an MD (Merchandising) Centre to cover the Tohoku Region, Hokkaido and Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures. We took Miyagi, the hub of the Tohoku region, under consideration, and eventually decided on the Second North Sendai Industrial Area, which boasts the largest scale in Tohoku.  What was to become the MD Centre began operations in June 2003, the first to make a foray into the Industrial Park.

As a food factory, the most important factor is water quality and the ability to use plenty of water. It is close to the highway inter-change, which gives us very good transportation access to port facilities and to all of the prefectures in Tohoku. When we were considering the purchase of land, the Industrial Park's real estate conditions were flexible in relation to re-zoning and gateway changes. This is our main reason for choosing this location.

From the time we selected this site to the point at which we decided to move forward with location, Miyagi Prefecture and Ohira Village were very enthusiastic in their responses.

We gained the full cooperation of local government bodies. For example, during worker recruitment, at first we were concerned about whether we would really get enough people together. We were able to use the community wireless broadcast system to appeal to people within the village. Fortunately, the recruitment went smoothly and there are about 200 employees working at the company now. About 80% of them are females, who commute to work by car from Ohira Village or from nearby cities and town. Members of staff who entered the company at the start of our operations are main pivots in our assembly lines, being active enough to be entrusted with the responsibility of managing each line.

Through the operation of the Sendai MD Centre, a system was put in place to enable the supply of ingredients to our restaurants all over Japan within 4 hours. Home dining has been changing along with radical changes in our lifestyles and the diversification of our needs. As a pioneer in the food service industry, we will continue to take on the challenge of "contributing to society" with "food" at the heart of what we do.