Overview
Rico’s is a chain of small supermarkets operated by G7 Japan Food Service Co., Ltd., a company that also runs food wholesaling and frozen food manufacturing. The stores trade under the sub-name “Supermarket Rico’s,” and they occupy a niche that is easy to walk past and hard to forget once you know the numbers behind it: roughly 50 tsubo, or about 165 square meters, typically carved out of the ground floor of a mixed-use office building or apartment block in central Tokyo. Most sit at or within a short walk of a train station, and the chain’s own store locator flags any location more than ten minutes on foot from the nearest station. The format invites comparison with My Basket, the small-store network run by AEON, with one difference of timing: the Uny Group built this kind of store in the Tokyo metropolitan area first.
Rico’s did not begin as Rico’s. The banner was established as a fresh-food convenience store under Uny’s 100-yen shop format, and it has carried several names since. It became a subsidiary of G-7 Holdings on April 1, 2020, leaving the Uny Group behind after a long stretch under Uny, Uny-FamilyMart, and PPIH ownership. As of 2022 it operated in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture, and its opening hours have drifted away from the round-the-clock model: many stores now open at 7 a.m. and close at midnight or 1 a.m.
The geography of Rico’s is unusually precise for a chain of its size. As of 2024 it operated in 23 wards of Tokyo plus parts of the Tama area, and in Yokohama and Kawasaki. In the 23 wards it has stores in Adachi, Itabashi, Edogawa, Ota, Kita, Koto, Shinagawa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Suginami, Setagaya, Taito, Chuo, Chiyoda, Toshima, Nakano, Nerima, Bunkyo, Minato, and Meguro — but not Arakawa. In the Tama area it runs one store each in Chofu, Fuchu, Machida, and Musashino. In Kawasaki it runs one store each in Kawasaki Ward, Takatsu Ward, and Miyamae Ward; in Yokohama it appears in Kanagawa, Kohoku, Midori, Aoba, Naka, Totsuka, and Konan wards. Withdrawals have been steady and documented to the day: Mini Piago Kamizawa 4-chome closed on January 30, 2022, ending the chain’s presence in Sumida Ward; Rico’s Aoto 4-chome and Gotokuji 1-chome closed on March 29, 2023, ending it in Katsushika Ward; Mini Piago Tsukagoshi 2-chome closed on May 13, 2022, ending it in Kawasaki’s Saiwai Ward; and Mini Piago Fuchu Midoricho 1-chome closed the same day, cutting Fuchu from two stores to one. Two surviving locations carry a dual banner with FamilyMart: the stores at Kawasaki Miyamae-daira and at Kikuna Station West.
History
Rico’s first appeared under the name 99 Ichiba, and the founding documents behind it carried a date: January 19, 2006, when Uny and Circle K Sunkus announced a joint venture to build what the two companies described as a “lifestyle convenience store” selling fresh food at uniform prices. The logic was arithmetic and unforgiving. A convenience store format would need supermarket know-how; a supermarket format would need convenience store speed; neither parent had both, so the joint venture, 99 Ichiba Co., Ltd., was capitalized by both. The name came directly from the price point: goods sold mostly at 99 yen before tax, priced with 199, 299, and up to 899 yen on a template that kept the digits 99 in the last two places.
The first store opened on February 17 of that year in Nishi-Kasai 3-chome, Edogawa Ward, Tokyo. On October 5, 2007, a variant banner built around frozen food, 99 Ichiba Kitchen, opened its Kitchen Edogawa Motohonisshiki 1-chome store. Both are now closed. The monthly sale in those years was held around the ninth of each month and was called Kyuichi Matsuri.
By January 13, 2010, the arithmetic had changed. The core price moved from 99 yen to 100 yen before tax, and Uny’s private brand StyleOne began appearing on shelves in limited quantities. The banner changed with it, to Minna no Ichiba, a name assembled from the word for “everyone’s” and the word for “market,” and the fresh produce share of the assortment was higher than at competitors. Logistics had been progressively merged with Uny’s, and some stores were converted into produce-heavy locations. The monthly sale shifted with the name, landing more often in a three-day run during the second and third weeks of the month.
On January 19, 2012, the ownership structure moved. Circle K Sunkus’s stake was transferred to 99 Ichiba at no charge, making the company a wholly owned subsidiary of Uny, and the banner was renamed Mini Piago to align with Uny’s small and mid-size supermarket brand. Uny classified these stores as “small-trade-area compact supermarkets.” The 100-yen shop identity was deliberately abandoned: general merchandise was cut back, food was expanded, and in-store preparation, briefly reduced, returned under the name Gochiso DELICA in the new-format stores. The first Mini Piago store opened on April 26 of that year at Ikebukuro 2-chome, and signage was swapped across the chain. From July 1, 2013, all stores accepted credit cards and electronic money, including transit IC cards under the national interoperability scheme with the exception of PiTaPa — but never Uny’s own uniko.
September 1, 2016 brought a new grandparent: Uny Group Holdings was absorbed into FamilyMart, forming Uny-FamilyMart Holdings, and the two chains began opening combination stores under the FamilyMart + Mini Piago banner, pairing convenience store convenience with supermarket range in the larger existing locations. The first opened in October 2016 when the Mini Piago Kikuna Station West store was renovated; the second opened on December 15, 2017, in a converted former Sunkus location at Kawasaki Miyamae-daira. When Uny left the FamilyMart group for PPIH, the collaboration stopped at those two stores.
PPIH’s turn came on January 4, 2019, when Don Quijote Holdings — later Pan Pacific International Holdings — bought 60 percent of Uny from Uny-FamilyMart Holdings and made it a wholly owned subsidiary, pulling 99 Ichiba out of that group as well. PPIH’s common electronic money, majica, introduced at Uny from April 6, 2020, was never installed at these stores.
The departure from Uny proper was announced on February 27, 2020: G-7 Holdings would acquire 80 percent of 99 Ichiba effective April 1, 2020, with the remaining 20 percent to follow on April 1, 2022. G-7 Holdings already counted among its subsidiaries G-7 Supermart, the largest franchisee of the Gyomu Super chain. Uy product supply continued after the split, StyleOne stayed on shelves, and meat was sold processed at Uny’s own processing center. On March 25, 2022, the last new store to open under the Mini Piago name opened at Gotokuji 1-chome; everything after would carry the Rico’s banner. Closures ran in parallel and on schedule. On April 1, 2022, G-7 Holdings took the remaining shares, made 99 Ichiba wholly owned as announced, and renamed it G-7 Rico’s Stores Co., Ltd.; the website moved from the domain used since 99 Ichiba’s founding, www.99-ichiba.jp, to g-7ricosstores.co.jp. The banners were swapped to Rico’s by the summer of that year, including the two FamilyMart combination stores, now operating as FamilyMart + Rico’s. On May 31, 2023, the chain stopped accepting Uny gift certificates, though StyleOne stayed. On July 1, 2026, G7 Japan Food Service absorbed G-7 Rico’s Stores, and the operation became that company’s Rico’s division.
Business Model
Rico’s runs on floor space that most supermarket operators would not bother to sign a lease for. A typical location is about 50 tsubo, roughly 165 square meters, taken on the ground floor of a mixed-use office building or apartment block, in most cases at or near a station. The format descends from an explicitly discounted premise: the chain was founded to sell at a uniform price, first at 99 yen before tax, with everything else priced to end in 99 — 199, 299, on up to 899 yen. When the base price moved to 100 yen before tax in 2010, the banner changed with it, and the assortment shifted further toward fresh food. Under the Mini Piago name the general merchandise share was deliberately reduced, food was deepened, and Uny classified the stores as compact supermarkets for small trade areas.
Ownership of the banner changed four times, but the supply chain changed less than the logos suggest. Rico’s took goods from Uny even after leaving the Uny Group, continued to carry Uny’s private brand StyleOne, and sold meat processed at Uny’s own processing center. Electronic money tells a similar story of partial integration: from July 1, 2013, all stores accepted credit cards and electronic money including transit IC cards under the national interoperability scheme, with PiTaPa excluded. Uny’s own uniko was never introduced, and neither was PPIH’s majica, which Uny began rolling out on April 6, 2020. Uny gift certificates were accepted until the chain stopped taking them on May 31, 2023. Two stores operate under a dual banner with FamilyMart, pairing convenience store traffic with supermarket range.
The operator itself has a longer and stranger balance sheet than the stores suggest. G7 Japan Food Service keeps its registered head office in Suma Ward, Kobe, and its operating head office in Ibaraki, Osaka, and it runs food wholesaling and frozen food manufacturing alongside the supermarkets. Its lineage runs back to 1976, when KCB Foods Service was spun out of the food and beverage division of Kinki Coca-Cola Bottling; the company was later renamed KCB, absorbed Seraria and Cola Connection in January 1999 to become C&C, took over Kinki Coca-Cola Bottling’s specialty food and Ange de Village businesses in January 2001, spun the Ange de Village business and some restaurants and miscellaneous goods stores into a separate company in March 2008, came under G-7 Holdings in June 2008, absorbed Cold Family in January 2013 and Ueno Foods in January 2014, and took its current name in October 2014 before absorbing G-7 Food System in April 2015. It brought Mitsuwa Liquor under its wing in July 2023 and absorbed G-7 Rico’s Stores on July 1, 2026. G-7 Rico’s Stores, for its part, had been founded on January 23, 2006 as 99 Ichiba, a fifty-fifty venture between Uny and Circle K Sunkus; Circle K Sunkus added capital until it held 80.1 percent, then handed that stake back to 99 Ichiba free of charge in 2012; Uny sold 80 percent of the company to G-7 Holdings on April 1, 2020 for 1.25 billion yen, and the remaining 20 percent followed on April 1, 2022. The registered head office moved from Inazawa, Aichi to Kobe in July 2020, then within Kobe in April 2021, then to Shin-Yokohama in Kohoku Ward, Yokohama on March 11, 2024, out of the PPIH Oguchi Building in Kanagawa Ward that had housed it since 2009 and had served as Uny’s Kanto office when 99 Ichiba was founded. It moved again to a TK Building in Kanagawa Ward on March 23, 2026, and was dissolved by absorption on July 1, 2026.
Cultural Impact
The names are the record. 99 Ichiba took its identity from a price tag and held a monthly sale called Kyuichi Matsuri around the ninth of each month. Minna no Ichiba took its name from the words for “everyone’s” and “market,” and its monthly sale settled into a three-day run in the second or third week. Mini Piago borrowed from Uny’s own Piago banner and held the category label “small-trade-area compact supermarket.” The current name arrived by renaming a company first and the stores second: the corporate entity became G-7 Rico’s Stores on April 1, 2022, and the signage followed by that summer. Two FamilyMart combination stores survive under the joint name, the last physical trace of an ownership era that also produced uniko, majica, and a website domain, www.99-ichiba.jp, that had been in use since the founding year of the first banner.