Born in Buenos Aires, raised in Houston

My name is Nicolas Koreni. Born in Buenos Aires, raised in Houston, in Tokyo since 2002. My areas of expertise are IT, food, and real estate. I love baseball, and play every week with a team here in Tokyo.

Q: Your relationship to food?

When my family imigrated to the US, my father couldn't speak English at first, so the only job he could get was a worker in a kitchen. After a while, he became a waiter in a Mexican restaurant and worked there for 30 years. When I was a kid, I would go there almost every week, so you could say I grew up inside of a restaurant. Also, I myself have since high school worked in many restaurants, both in the US and in Japan, as a waiter or bartender. Of course, I love cooking and cook for myself almost every night.

Q: How did you come to join Cafe Company?

Before joining Cafe Company, I was running my own real estate consultancy here in Tokyo with the goals of "urban planning" and "community building" and ending up creating Tokyo's first coworking space in 2009. While working on various projects and talking with various real estate developers and building owners, Cafe Company's and Kusumoto-san's names kept coming up. It was then that I learned that it's not simply a restaurant company, but, like I did, has a focus on "urban planning" and "community building."

I was able to reach out directly to Kusumoto-san one day, and after sitting down and talking for a while, I ended up joining the company.

My main mission is to make us a more global company.

Q: What are you doing now?

A lot of things. I have a Japanese real estate license and many years in the industry, so I do real estate work, help design and build new cafe, and I'll also use my own restaurant experience to help open new locations and train new waiters and bartenders.

Recently, my main mission is to make us a more global company. The first step for this was to start a project to recruit and hire more global staff. I was the only foreigner in the company, but in the first two years, I personally recruited and hired over 200 foreigner staff. I want this to lead to us opening more overseas locations.

Q: What does community mean to you?

A natural extension of family.

Q: A word for those thinking of joining Cafe Company?

Though everything in the company centers around "food", we are not just a restaurant company. As our main goal is to build community, this includes hotels, coworking spaces, or any number of other possibilities, so I recommend it for those who want a challenge. Of course, you've got to love food!