Japanese commerce giant Rakuten is to open a flagship cafe in Shibuya, Tokyo on May 29.
Designed by Kashiwa Sato, the Rakuten Cafe will offer customers a menu featuring some of the most popular desserts and snacks from Rakuten Ichiba and will allow patrons to experience a variety of Rakuten services.
Rakuten Cafe is an offline extension of Rakuten’s expansive suite of Internet services. In addition to serving menu items influenced by Rakuten Ichiba, Rakuten Cafe will offer information to the public on everything from financial services to Kobo eReading, and of course, online shopping.
Kobo eReaders are located throughout the café for customers to freely use, in addition to complementary use of power sockets and mobile phone chargers. In addition, it will offer 1GBPS Wifi, free of charge.
It will also offer customers multiple payment methods, including Rakuten Edy touch payments and Rakuten SmartPay mobile credit card payment processing service. A concierge is also on duty at all times, ready to answer any questions customers might have about Rakuten services.
On the menu are Rakuten Ichiba’s most popular desserts, light meals and drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. As a true café Rakuten Cafe prides itself on the quality of its coffeehouse beverages and aims to offer a selection of premium coffee-based beverages (including drip coffee, latte, cappuccino, and espresso) made from selectively curated coffee bean varieties. Coffee and tea menu beverages are half price if purchased using Rakuten Card.
“Rakuten hopes to create a venue that will introduce new audiences to the Rakuten’s services and to offer an additional marketing channel for Rakuten Ichiba merchants,” the company said in a statement.