In The Begining
Armed with a strong passion for high-quality food, our founder, Takeda Yohei left his native Japan for Singapore to pursue his dreams of introducing Japanese Takoyaki to Singaporeans via the Takopachi brand name. During that time in 1994, he was the only person with the foresight and courage to look beyond convention and believe that Takoyaki could be popular outside of Japan. This was despite his being relatively young at 26 years old.

Everyone else had felt that this was an exclusively-Japanese snack that could not be accepted by people from other cultures and with different tastes. However, trusting his instinct and vision, Yohei took his big step out and became the pioneer of Takoyaki outside of Japan. Acquiring a pushcart at Clark Quay, he took his first step towards introducing the Takopachi blend of takoyaki to the rest of the world, and has never looked back since.


Three Flavour Concept
Deciding to merge tradition with adaptation, Yohei improvised by introducing two distinctively-localised variants to the traditional octopus-ball. The first variety was the prawn-filled version as, from his careful observation, prawn was an extremely popular type of seafood in Singapore. The other was bacon-&-cheese, which was slightly more westernised and which provided choice outside of seafood to consumers.

If imitation is indeed the most sincere form of flattery, the perfect testimony to the success of his adaptations would be the fact that this exact 3-flavour concept is now widely-imitated throughout Southeast Asia.


Three-in-a-box
In yet another first, Takopachi was the first brand that came up with the idea of having the "3-in-a-box" package. Originally, takoyaki is typically sold in Japan in packs of 8. However, understanding that customers in Singapore may prefer smaller pack sizes since it was consumed as a snack, Yohei decided that Takopacki should offer its products in boxes of three, making it more manageable and affordable.


Our Expansion
With our founder's intimate understanding of customers' preferences, his determination and hard work, the Takopachi brand rose to become so well-know that it has sometimes even become synonymous with takoyaki. Our first permanent stall was subsequently established at Ngee Ann City on February 1996, and it has remained the flagship stall until now. The brand has continued to grow, resulting in 3 more stalls being opened at Bugis, Bishan and Tampines by popular demand.


Founder's Philosophy and Beliefs
In order to keep up to his own uncompromising standards, which most of the time is even more exacting than that of the customers', Yohei insists on monitoring the quality of the takoyaki very closely. He personally hand picks all ingredients and oversees every step in the operations. It is nothing out of the ordinary if he appears at all four stalls within the same day. Many of our employees have also been at some point personally coached and offered pointers by their meticulous boss, for whom "perfectionist" is nothing but an understatement.

It is also this insistence on personal involvement with quality control that has led Yohei to decide he wishes to limit his operations to a manageable scale. This has led us to reject many offers from interested franchisees or even requests from customers and fans alike to open more stalls. On this count we wish to apologise to customers for not expanding our business, but we hope that you will understand that this is because our founder wishes for you to enjoy food of only the best quality.