crew member

production

restaurant staff

dishwasher/busser

restaurant manager

Ichiran

This restaurant only serves one menu item- RAMEN! Yet nothing is simple about it. A lot of craft and hard work goes into creating your bowl and they do their best to create the perfect experience for customers. Yet because of this working for Ichiran is very stressful. 

A typical day at Ichiran starts with you arriving atleast 7 minutes before your shift up to an hour before. This 7 minute standard gives a bit of insight as to how the work culture here is. ICHIRAN believes that it should take you about 7 minutes to change into the uniform so they let you clock in 7 minutes before your shift and clock out 7 minutes before the end of your shift. Employees sometimes arrive more than an hour early to avoid being marked late. If you are late you get "points" taken off of your record. Enough points off and its automatic termination. The same goes for calling out, no-shows, breaking rules... NO EXCEPTIONS NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 

 After you clock in you are to quickly change into your uniform as you are now on their time. Make sure to put your phone in your locker because being caught with it will result in termination! Yes, you heard right, no phones! You also cannot leave anything overnight in the lockers, so get used to lugging your black uniform pants with you to work. Around this time is when the job starts feeling like it's for high schoolers.. Actual rules include no colored hair, no dancing, whistling, singing, or humming...hushed tones only, must have socks, no jewelry or piercings, no false nails, no nail polish, no beards, must have a pen... the list goes on. I won't speak on these too much as it makes sense to be quiet in a "flavor concentration" booth restaurant and no piercings because it can get in the food but not really the hair one. This isn't corporate, we're in NYC, and it's covered anyways. 

There will be a meeting before every shift where they check your hand for wounds, nail length, and nail polish. They will also inform you of any changes so they are good with communication in that respect. Now it's time to start your shift!
 
It's really a simple job, yet somehow so stressful and laborious. To top it off they merged the positions. So if you got hired as BOH you're now waiting tables, bussing, & taking orders as well as cooking and vice versa for FOH. Double the work, same pay. It's just not really worth it. Very different structure from American wait staff restaurants. Not to mention you have to bow and bend a lot which led to extreme back pain for me and other employees I have spoken to.
Duties include:
• Taking orders
• serving
• cashier
• bussing tables
• cleaning bathrooms 
• washing dishes
• cooking ramen
• preparing side dishes 
• taking out trash
• sweeping and mopping
• + more

Now it's time for break. Lucky you! Free ramen. Can't complain much about it besides that you are limited to certain items. No garlic.
So you will never experience the full authentic taste. Also no toppings unless they are about to expire or they have extra. There's a form for your meal too as there is for everything at Ichiran. Guess what! Your breaks are timed with a timer! Very strange, yet somewhat helpful? Still feels a bit juvenile. Remember to take your shoes off before you enter the break room, it's very Japanese in this way. Make sure you slurp all your ramen before time runs out or you'll have to ask for a break extension which will probably be turned down. 

Ok, back to work! It's usually non-stop here! Constant orders, constant rushing, if you like that it's fine. But don't think that a busy restaurant means more money. No tipping establishment here! And when it's slow don't expect to relax, you must find something to do at all times. The Japanese hate an idle employee. Alright, now it's time to leave. If you're leaving before closing that's great. You don't have to do anything and you leave exactly on time, but it's a different story for closers. Now that our shift is over let's go over the best and worst parts about working here.

PROs:
• Organized (in comparison to prior jobs)
• Quick onboarding process 
• Communication (while there are some language barriers they do a good job in posting announcements.)
• Evaluations (so you can get promoted)
• No work drama, everyone is pretty professional. 
• Everyone works, no one is slacking and everyone helps out. Lots of teamwork.
• No favoritism, no sexism, no racism

CONs:
• High labor / high stress / low pay
• Long hours (generally most jobs are 6 hours part time and 8 full time but they consistently have employees working 7, 8, & 9hr+ shifts. Maybe this is due to Japanese culture? )
• Bad work/life balance (it's hard to take time off and they require you to work one shift a week...so no vacations)
• Finicky, fastidious, and overbearing (they want you to do EVERYTHING in a super specific way and are not lenient about it)
• Poor integration (almost all higher ups are Japanese- which is fine but they seem to have no idea about American work culture and therefore have a super high turn over)
• Communication ( I know I had this in my pros list but while they are good about making announcements they could use some improvements in how they talk to employees) 
• Overly strict, while it's great that rules are enforced some don't make sense and it's over done. I think it's like this because of Japanese culture but it doesn't mesh well with American work culture. 
• It's hard to make suggestions because of the language barriers 

In conclusion, this job is not the worst. It's not the best either. Its stressful and arduous but if it's your first job maybe it's a good place to start. I would not reccomend staying here long term. Save up or achieve whatever goal you had in mind and leave for somewhere with a better work culture and better starting pay, look for jobs while you're working but don't forget to research the environment. There is not much of a future at Ichiran and they have a lot that needs to be worked on. Remember, when you spend all your time working for someone else you are only contributing to their dream and not yours. You are an asset yet still to be respected. Good luck!

If you're reading this then that means you may be considering Ichiran as your place of employment. You're in luck because for the most part the hiring process is pretty seamless and there's definitely no lack of hours due to the perpetual short staffing. Keep in mind that you need to work weekends, closings, and whatever holidays you just happen to work on. They recently increased the pay because they were having a hard time hiring prior.


I'll start with the good things about Ichiran (This is coming from my experience working at the midtown west location):

-Coworkers are great, they may be the only reason you stick around for a while after you inevitably get burnt out and squeezed dry. It's nice to have someone who shares your struggles.

-Plenty of potential hours depending on how badly you need them. Keep in mind that in order to access them you will have to close every day probably.

-The job is super easy. Even easier since they lowered the standard to reduce turnover.  When I first started back in the spring of 2019 they would only settle for perfection for the sake of consistency which was respectable. You used to need to say certain Japanese phrases when interacting with the customer but now you have the option to just speak the equivalent in English which is what most trainees do since there's no benefit doing the latter. 


The bad things:

-HR is out of touch completely and then take around a week to respond. Lets say it takes 4 messages or so to get an inquiry settled. That's around a month. This is definitely something to consider because you will inevitably need to consult HR for certain things.

-There is a decent amount of bias involved when it comes to promotions. There used to be long multiple choice tests that you had to complete after you were nominated to get a role. Now its meeting a requirement for a question on paper thats filled out by a manager. That means it's pretty subjective. As much as I hated the test system it produced more consistently skilled supervisors. But yeah you will notice that people who get paid more than you know less that you which can get pretty demoralizing. They do promotions more often now but they don't hire in comparison to skill but out of necessity. They need to keep that weird hierarchy system going so when a SV or something quits they need to fill that void again. 

-Every change needs to go through Japan HQ first before it's implemented. In other words it takes a large amount of time to pass before any changes (good or bad) are passed. Managers are merely puppets that take orders from the HQ. Theres a few Japanese managers from the office that are appointed by HQ.

-The point system. This one has actually recently been re-hauled as it used to be one whole month before you get a point back which is crazy for an industry known for its high turnover rate. The new rate for point accumulation is a point every 2 weeks. Keep track of your points because the office/HR doesn't do a good job.

~Pre-80 hours you have like 2-3 points
~trainee or higher you get 7-8 points starting and it maxes at 10... 1 point loss for being late (this is even a minute late so plan accordingly) 2 points for calling out. 3 points for no call no show. 1 point loss for leaving mid shift. 1 point loss for coming in late regardless of how late. You mind as well get that coffee now that it doesn't matter anymore. The main exception is you get a doctors note to excuse you there is no point loss. Make sure the doctors note is physical and not digital and that the note specifies dates and times that you need covered. The thing that let to the re-haul was the fact that too many people had low points and they risked shorter opening hours if those people were to get the boot after losing all their points.



TLDR: If you want to grow at this company: Never complain, never be late, socialize with managers. You will eventually be lost in a sea of similar ranked coworkers so getting promotions passed a certain point is more difficult. 

As a part-time job, you would expect there's room for flexibility. At Ichiran, the part-time job does not mean flexibility at all. Usually, in a branch, there's a lot higher management such as supervisors, supervisors candidate, assistant managers, assistant managers candidate, general assistant manager, etc. While they have a significant number of managers, none of them deserves the respect of their fellow employees. 
First, they never consider your availability information. Even as a new hire where you have already submitted the availability information to managers during the interview, the management still messes up with your schedule. I have to frequently contact the administration to request the schedule to be fixed, and this is even worse because they would (1) ignore your message OR (2) they would delete the shifts without putting in another shift. For example, you are not available to work on Sunday, and they scheduled you regardless the availability, if you report the error, they will delete the shift. There's no alternative to make up the lost shift due to the management's fault. 
Secondly, they love making people working ultra-short shifts, which means each of your shifts will usually be no longer than 5 hours (4 or 5 hours shift), and I don't know if favoritism is a factor, but I do realize some employee does get a more extended shift than others even though they are both the new hire and in the same position (i.e., employee A is scheduled for 4 hours shifts three days/week in a row; employee B is scheduled for 8 hours shifts three days/week in a row). Also, I suspect that they do it on purpose because they offer Free Ramen for the employee's lunch break. Making employees working less than 6 hours will make them ineligible for the free ramen. What's bad about it is that most of us commute to work, and some of our commutes could be an hour to get to the restaurant. There's no point in working on an ultra-short shift when my commute to and from the restaurant would take 2-3 hours! I would not even sign the offer letter if I was told that's how employees are scheduled at Ichiran because it's just ridiculous that they act they are employee-friendly by giving them free lunch, but at the same time, they schedule their fellow employees with the ridiculously short shift!

I worked at Ichiran for almost a year. Became a supervisor candidate in less than 3 months. And that’s where it all began to go down hill. The new location of Times Sq is ran by basically “new” management. People who were “managers” but were never really in charge. The way they handle conflict is TERRIBLE. As a supervisor i was threatened about 3 times by an employee, once i told management i was told “why can’t you ignore it? Stay away from her” i asked if the girl could be possiblely moved to night they said “why should we punish her for you?” They’ll do NOTHING ABOUT IT. Not even separate you two. That’s when I should've realized the place is corrupted. They expect you to dedicate your whole entire life to Ichiran. ONLY one week of vacation PER YEAR as a Full Time employee & as part time you get no PTO but when asking for a week off or so they will tell you no. Many were forced to quit & come back for their family vacations or maybe just being sick for awhile. You only get 40hrs of sick leave A YEAR which you have to accumulate on your own. 40hrs (of reg work)= ONE HOUR SICK LEAVE. 
The favoritism and immaturity of this place is laughable. You have MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS talking about the employees (behind their back) that’s extremely noticeable. The micro managed rules are only applied to those who are not a favorite. Most management is from japan so they can be EXTREMELY RUDE. Yelling in people’s faces, snatching of items out of their hand, the list goes on. 
It’s a sin to laugh in that kitchen. People have gotten written up for dancing/ singing in the kitchen and hours went 36hrs per week to 4hrs per week. 
It’s unpredictable of how your day may go or what managers may micromanage or pick on you for next. I enjoyed my time at Ichiran solely because of the employees. Every other location in NY management is fine it is only Times Sq whose management lack respect, people skills, and just plain management.

Unless you're absolutely STELLAR in your interview and you have above and beyond qualifications, you're gonna get hard stuck at starting as a part-time employee, and depending on who interviews you you're gonna get hard stuck at closing shift. Good luck trying to change that, most employees have to fight tooth and nail to have their availability changed and even then management will often just go back on it at a whim whenever they feel like it.

Part time mostly consists of around 25~35 hours, while having to work your way up to full time often puts you at working miserable hours for 5 days a week. They understaff for opening shift, and overstaff in the summer season when it tends to be dead as a doorknob. 

Management often just sits up in the office, having to be reached via radio communication instead of actually being aware and present on the floor. Most times they'll sit on cameras and just watch staff like it's the bank or something.

They advertise that you can get 1-hour breaks, but the standard is 45 minutes. Not even full-time employees get 1-hour breaks, unless it's slow service. Morning shift, or short afternoon shift workers, often get told to wait until the end of their shift to have their staff meal / break.

There is a health insurance benefit that they advertise, but it is only offered to full-time employees and also runs a very expensive bill at the first of every month (~$375 last I recall, if not a bit higher).

Great FIRST job, but you'll find better if you look a bit harder than this one.

from all my experience, i would say i was quite satisfied with the job. the staff and management were all friendly and easy to communicate with. the pay is good. however, we were often understaffed, and the higher-ups expected a lot from the staff. changing your availability became harder due to the lack of staff. you can't always be friendly with the staff cause it just causes a lot of drama. the most important thing that affects my review is the higher-ups hiring someone to be the general manager who had no idea about ichiran before coming in. every time the kitchen needed help, they took their time coming down to help us. they would go and just start talking to others when we needed help. they couldn't keep up with the rush hours and believed they could handle it on their own, and other staff would have to clean up their work. besides all that, i genuinely loved this job, but as time goes, i lost my meaning of being there. its a good place to work in as a starter, but you are expected to dedicate your whole life to this job. and as you work, you see all the flaws this company has. take it as you will.

The job culture is very similar to Japans toxic work culture. Late 1 minute and you lose a point. Start with 8 points. 1 point gained per month if you're flawless with attendance. They dont take into account the delays from trains and other factors. They are very slow to implement things that will benefit employee happiness and also increase profits. Lets say you managed to get into a managerial role, if you're not Japanese then your words don't have value. The only thing Ichiran got right was the fact that many employees they hired were AMAZING. It made the job better but as they kept quitting because of the bad work/no tipping culture or losing points the happiness just dwindles and it doesnt matter since you're expendable. 40 hours PTO per year. 2 weeks notice or it will be declined.



The ramen is no doubt good but behind the scenes it probably is the least authentic ramen restaurant i've seen and the price does not justify the ramen they sell per day via bulk ingredients.

The job is super easy but the management is beyond incompetent. A typical day at work involves being understaffed because of the high turn over rate (Gee, i wonder why). Early in the day isn't to bad but there's always a line by lunch due to only having 46 seats; So really the line is artificial. If you're not doing your job with a smile on your face, you're considered emotional and will be passed over for promotion regardless of your consistency and work ethic. The only thing that makes the job bearable is the other employees and how we all are in agreement that we hate working here and that management loves making stupid decisions. I learned it doesn't matter if you put in almost 2 years loyally cause you'll still get treated like the expendable piece of garbage. I'd only reccomend this job if you're desperate.

The work is pretty easy, all you had to do was do simple tasks. The main problem would be the the management and "Talking behind your back". If you were cool with the managers, you could get away with anything. The Supervisors would usually only work seriously whenever a manager was around, and just make the regular staff do everything. Supervisors were supposed to teach the new trainees, but they were lazy and had regular staff train them. The worst part was the two-face and the gossip. They would be nice to your face, only to talk about your behind your back. It was mostly quantity and less of quality. If you ever think about working here, just be prepared for a big toll on your mental health.

If you are looking for a job, Ichiran is not a good option. Most of the people are really nice, staff, SVC and SV. But the managers (not the Japanese’s managers) are the worst people here. They will harass you, make you felt useless and even if you are working harder they won’t give a thing. The favoritismt is a REALLY big issue, SV and above will often put their friend in the most easy positions, while other have to do the hard work. If this is your first job, trust me you don’t want to start here. At Ichiran, now you have do back of the house and front of the house, you have to learn everything in order to become a “Staff” to become and SV you have to give you entire life! 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Crew member 1 salary reported	$21.00 per hour
Production 4 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour
Restaurant staff 4 salaries reported	$20.75 per hour
Dishwasher/busser 5 salaries reported	$17.50 per hour
Restaurant manager 2 salaries reported	$24.00 per hour

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