ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has agreed with Toreta, Inc. (headquartered in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo; Hitoshi Nakamura, CEO; hereinafter “Toreta”), a company involved in reservation and customer book services, to acquire shares in Toreta through a private placement and to form a tie-up with Toreta in business process outsourcing (BPO).

Toreta provides reservation and customer book services to eating and drinking establishments. In the restaurant industry, reservation and customer management has normally been done on paper. Toreta is promoting the rapid adoption of information technology for this work.

First, ITOCHU will jointly develop a reservation management service where the contact center of BELLSYSTEM24, Inc. (headquartered in Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Kenji Komatsu, President & CEO; hereinafter “BELLSYSTEM24”) will receive calls to make reservations – about 95% of all reservations at eating and drinking establishments are made by telephone – and will provide the reservation service to the drinking and eating establishments that have introduced Toreta’s services as added value.
Meanwhile, ITOCHU will develop services in Asia, using its network. In Taiwan, ITOCHU will consider forming a business tie-up with Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan; Rick Tsai, Chairman & CEO; hereinafter “Chunghwa Telecom”), Taiwan’s biggest telecommunications carrier, to use its sales network.

ITOCHU positions BPO, which is closely related to IT, as a priority field. It will continue to expand its BPO business domain through business tie-ups with companies that have leading-edge business models and are creating new BPO fields.

Toreta is a reservation and customer book service that allows users to manage reservations easily at all sorts of eating and drinking establishments ranging from high-end restaurants to pubs and bars. Toreta has focused on user friendliness, an approach that has been well received. The service was launched in December 2013, and more than 4,900 establishments have so far registered for it. Toreta has the largest market share in the reservation book system industry*. Toreta will take the lead in innovation in the management of eating and drinking establishments through innovation in reservations.