An executive at Yoshinoya Co., a popular beef bowl restaurant chain, has been dismissed over a gaffe he made over the weekend at a Tokyo university, in which he called on students to come up with an attractive marketing strategy that would get "innocent young girls" hooked on the meal as though it were a drug.
Yoshinoya Holdings Co., parent company of the chain, said in a statement Tuesday that it dismissed Masaaki Ito, an executive officer at the parent firm and a board member at Yoshinoya, on Monday due to his “intolerable remarks regarding human rights and gender.” It will also reduce compensation for Yoshinoya Holdings President Yasutaka Kawamura by 30% from April through June over the incident.
On Saturday, Ito was invited to give a guest lecture at Waseda University about marketing in the digital era, and he asked students to come up with marketing ideas.