Bakery chain accused of copycatting

Shop assistants make cakes at the RIKURO bakery in the Réel Department Store on Nanjing Road West Thursday. Photo: Cai Xianmin/GT

The city's commerce authority has started investigating a popular Shanghai-based bakery chain accused of misleading its customers by posing as a venerable Japanese bakery, the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce said Thursday.

Administration officials in Pudong New Area have ordered the RIKURO bakery chain to provide evidence to back up some of its advertising claims, according to an administration press release.

Since July, the local chain has said several times on its microblog that it operates under the Japanese chain Rikuro's, a decades-old bakery chain in the country. Photographs of all nine of the Rikuro's stores in Japan have been posted on the local chain's microblog. In August, the local chain posted that it has been popular in Taiwan for 25 years.

However, Rikuro's website states that it doesn't own or operate any stores other than the nine in Kansai, Japan.

The RIKURO chain, which runs more than seven stores in Shanghai, came under fire after a microblogger pointed out on September 22 that its name and logo resemble, but don't quite match, the name and logo of the Japanese bakery Rikuro's, leading to online accusations of copycatting. The post was forwarded more than 1,500 times.

The possibility that the chain appropriated an established brand name to boost its own popularity irked microbloggers and customers in a part because the chain has been such a hit on the Chinese mainland. Customers had to wait two to three hours to buy a specific kind of cheesecake at the RIKURO store in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the Nanjing-based Oriental Guardian reported last month.

At the RIKURO bakery in the Réel Department Store in Jing'an district Thursday, an employee said customers used to routinely line up for more than an hour to pick up one of the cheesecakes. In front of the counter, a monitor looped a video of a popular Taiwanese talk show that recommended an unnamed cheesecake resembling the one sold at RIKURO.

A customer surnamed Qiu, who bought one of the cheesecakes, said she went to the chain specifically because it advertised itself as a famous brand in Taiwan. She told the Global Times that the chain would never have gotten so popular if customers didn't think it was a well-known brand in Taiwan or Japan.

It is unlikely that the RIKURO chain will be punished for copyright infringement if the Japanese chain has not opened any stores in the Chinese market, said a senior official from the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce, who asked to remain anonymous. However, officials are still investigating whether the local chain could be punished for false advertising.

The RIKURO headquarters in Changning district refused to comment on the matter Thursday afternoon.