The maid cafe industry is apparently having a tough time of it, with Akiba cafe numbers halving in recent years, and some fearing the maid cafe bubble may have actually burst for good.
According to reports by journalists anxiously reporting on the state of this most crucial of Japan’s industries, it is not looking good – one database lists a total of a mere 132 maid cafes in Akihabara, out of the 282 recorded as having opened.
How their numbers could have apparently halved when they offer such an essential service is the subject of much speculation online:
“Paying ¥1200 for some frozen omelette a girl has written ‘nyan nyan’ on in ketchup is not happening.”
“Nobody thinks ‘I’m hungry, I’ll go eat at a maid cafe.’ The barrier to entry for any normal person is rather high.”
“Maids are OK but serve us normally, none of that moe-moe-kyun stuff please!”
“They did a maid cafe out our school festival and that was quite enough for me.”
“Their personnel system is set up like a cabaret club but you can’t touch and their revenue comes only from light meals and drinks. It’s a difficult model to sustain.”
“I went to one on a business trip to Tokyo, but the service is just too annoying. I was expecting something quite different.”
“I’m not convinced by the statistics. They just show a high rate of closures, but that’s about it.”
“Right, they may just have a short life expectancy per-shop, with fast opening and fast closing”
“With all the otaku in them they hardly provide an environment appealing to new customers.”
“Look at all the cuties they have at the AKB cafe!:”
“What are these creatures…”
“Somebody throw some water on them.”
“Aren’t there any normal cafes where they just dress in maid uniforms?”
“Yes, try Ginza West or something.”
“Maid cafes are just too high level. It was inevitable they’d go out of fashion.”
“Over ¥1000 for a glass of juice is outrageous. And despite being maids the service is poor and well below that you’d see in a cabaret club. And of course, they are patronised by creepy regulars. Why would anyone go to one?”
“They are all the same when it comes to regular customers compared to actual cafes. You are better off going to one of those.”
“The number of maid cafes boomed, and with all the copy cat cafes their image collapsed and customers lost interest. You can find cute JKs at a normal fast food place and just go there, and you won’t get ripped off.”
“You can buy anything in Akihabara anywhere else these days, no wonder fewer people feel drawn there. I haven’t been for a year.”
“I’d be OK with a maid cafe where the staff dressed as maids but didn’t try to shove any moe nonsense down your throat or provide fake conversations.”
“They are just daytime cabaret clubs. Too many of them are managed by the same people as those clubs too…”
“They used to be run by otaku, these days it is just the same yakuza who run the brothels. And their mass influx is why it ended up like this.”
“I’m still waiting for a yandere cafe…”
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“The number of maid cafes boomed, and with all the copy cat cafes their image collapsed and customers lost interest. You can find cute JKs at a normal fast food place and just go there, and you won’t get ripped off.”
This is good advice!
Just went to the imouto cafe in akiba yesterday. Payed 1000 yen for just an ice cream T_T
Still, anybody who actually lives in Japan knows that maid cafes aren't going away anytime soon. They're probably opening more frequently, if anything.
Also, I honestly think a lot of the girls at the AKB48 cafe are more cute than some of the AKB48 members themselves.
Nagomi! That place is kind of smokey though lol
But yeah, just being able to interact with the maids on the Akihabara streets is fun enough.
I think they should have "special dishes" where the maid comes to play a bit with the customer and then normal food with normal prices.
When I went to Tokyo, I wanted to go to a maid cafe, but I ultimately decided against it. I needed to conserve my money after spending a helluva lot at Comiket 78, and still needed some for the train ride back to the airport... as well as seeing the Zoroark Pokemon movie in theaters, buying me one of those kitsune masks, and a couple other random tidbits.
Actually, I probably could've abstained from buying a couple video games while I was in Akiba... but ah well. From the sounds of it, it seems I wasn't missing much. Though I wonder, on the whole "moe moe kyun" stereotype, is it possible to request characters? And if so, what happens if you request something like "a realist kuudere"?
LOSER SHIT! GTFO AND DIE!
A yandere cafe sounds fun to to though. I won't mind spending a bit of my cash to see dat yandere vibe.
I would think that a yandere cafe would be like in Hotel California (a song by the Eagles).
"You can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave..."
Why not Karma Hotel by Spooks
The first yandere cafe should be put on a second-hand Norwegian ferry boat moored in the harbor.
I hear those boats are very nice.
I went for the tsundere option last time I went to a maid cafe. Was funny.
Same here, but I ended up crying towards the end...
On a more serious note though, I have noticed a couple of the maid café in Otaroad failing. One of them was literally empty in the evening.
O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E! O-I-S-H-I-K-U-N-A-R-E!
how much do you pay for that many?
Treat them like an actual cafe/restaurant and maybe they wouldn't always be closing down. High quality food and drink are the foundations, which most maid cafes don't even have. It's no wonder they're shutting down.
A cafe with servers in boring outfits but good food and drinks at reasonable prices can run forever. There is no reason a maid cafe shouldn't make MORE! It's pure incompetence.
Then again, restaurants naturally has high closure rate in general. New research suggests that nearly 30 percent of restaurants close down after their first year and 50 percent after the third.
When you apply maid cafes into the equation, the number becomes larger because they're not a typical type of restaurants people go to for food alone. They are rather a service establishment relying on the novelty of young women in maid dresses, and the prices they offer for the food alone are higher than average.
They complain about ¥1200 for food that was just reheated, but the sad reality is they don't realize how good they have it compared to the states. At any American chain restaurant, we probably pay the equivalent of ¥1400, plus ¥400 more for a tip, to have the same crappy reheated food with worse service. And we don't even get the "nyan nyan" in ketchup..! So when I went to a maid cafe with a Japanese friend I was shocked to hear that what they consider ridiculously expensive is what I consider to be normal restaurant/cafe meal prices (if not cheaper).
Maid cafes, paying the price of high-end prostitutes minus the fucking, most ingenious way to skin lonely nerds since fake video sexcams.
How do you fake a sexcam?
Simple... SFX!
Adultfriendfinder did that shit a lot, randomly video reels and bot chatting.
I know the reason why people didn't like those maid cafe's :
1. TOO EXPENSIVE
-¥1000 for single cup of coffee ($ 12), i know... everything in Japan is expensive, but this is ridiculous
2. Annoying Maids
3. Too much of maid cafe's (especially on akihabara)
4. No one eat on those cafe's except otaku, normal people will eat on Restaurant rather than those "Maid Cafe's"
You think that's expensive? There are someplaces here in This third world shithole named Brazil that would make that seems very reasonable. And they don't even have maid service!
You forgot to mention the quality is below China quality too!
Brazil ? hmm... i thought living on there is pretty cheap, like India for example, yes... it's a slums but have a very low living cost.
$12.00 for Coffee a BIG FUCK YOU.
That better come with Grey Goose shot in that shit.
Its standard casino price in VEGAS with/without a tip even in sight. We don't over-pour drinks either, unless you tipped well before or after.
Its all Open-pour bottles on the Strip mostly without Jiggers to measure drinks either.
I make more money then a made cafe, and I don't have act cute or smile when I don't have too.
My words; GTFO of my bar; I refuse the right to server you bitches who be drunk or trying to drink.
exchange rate fluctuated again kid. it's now once more a yen per cent rate. so your numbers are off.
1000 yen is roughly $10. A cup of orange juice like that got our Governor General audited.
I think most people are just finding real girl friends (or 2D ones). Same deal, but a shot at actual sex vs talking to some annoying girl trying to be "moe" & overpriced freezer section food.
Nope. Girlfriends have nothing to do with it. Married men will come out and look at other females if they are desperate enough or don't care for their relationship.
The maids are there generally for the single young adult male, but a customer is a customer regardless.
That doesn't match the stories about the young Japanese male "herbivore" population rising.
So they actually have maid cafes during school festivals. I wonder how they'd feel about barbarian otaku visiting these festivals.
And nothing of value is being lost
It is possible this phenomenon (maid cafes) is a generational fad. Now that the otaku or other types who would have gone them are either burned out, or "moved on". The customer base would shrink. Do even nerdy middle-school kids look forward to being able to go to maid cafes? In a few more decades there may be a handful left catering to senior citizens who haven't given up on it yet.
only losers without girlfriends go to such places
I bet most of their customers are married salary men actually.
And let me guess. Host clubs are still booming full of lonely housewives?
Stop over-charging customers for food and provide more variety on the menu. More entertainment features.
It's simple really. Throw in a Karoke box in there and host parties.
how can one complain about 3dpd, then pay 3-4x more than normal to be served by 3dpd in maid costumes?
Last time I went to one, it was bad service and too internationalized. They speak fluent English by now and on TVs/walls there are only otaku. Next time, I'll search for something more specialized.
“I’d be OK with a maid cafe where the staff dressed as maids but didn’t try to shove any moe nonsense down your throat or provide fake conversations.”
indeed, why cant they all just wear a maid clothes and act like one?
cant they all just act like Mori-san
-Good evening Kyoro-sama
-oh, u want me to spin right? here
wait, that sounds wrong...
Probably because hyper-feminists in the West keep whining about how maids are submissive and sexist, whilst at the same time bullying their own hundreds of man-servants into doing their bidding for the sake of the freedom of all woman-kind.
Doubtful. Japan doesn't really give enough a shit about the west's racism and sexism issues to alter their own culture.
Also, if you've ever been to one, they're really quite shitty and not worth the prices they charge.
People who never went to japan have to be aware that akibara is ridiculously small. 282 is just too crazy compared to the size (and 132 is still far too numerous)
When you stroll in akiba and see all these maids everywhere giving all these leaflets, at some point you're just fed up and avoid them.
Every booms have to end someday anyway, and it's a good thing as only the decent maid cafe will survive to this... maybe
I spend £60 just buying two plates of curry with tap water at @home.
If there's a big spender on the floor, like an office party popping champagne, you get totally ignored.
It's worth it once for the experience, but never again, too expensive! You could go to an image club and ask the girl to just eat lunch with you for less.
The 2D maid picture is hot
Thus is the power of Super Sonico.
“They used to be run by otaku"
This is the answer!
Otakus, Start up a maid cafe and show the citizens how a maid cafe should be like.
Not quite an answer. A number of otaku would try to staff with their ideal 2D girls, and then your customers start leaving when the picture of a girl on the 3DS at the end of the table just can't get your order right.
Have McDonalds and KFC cashiers and waitresses wear maid uniforms and charge more than 1000yen for a one piece chicken.