Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart

The vendor opportunity at Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart

Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart operates a tiny US footprint of 3 total units, all of which are company-owned as of the 2023 FDD. The number of franchised units is not disclosed, and year-over-year unit growth data is absent from the filing. For a software vendor, the immediate addressable market is limited to these 3 locations and the HQ entity in New Jersey. The average unit volume (AUV) is not disclosed, so sizing a deal on a per-location revenue metric is not possible from public data. The royalty rate sits at 5.0%, and the initial franchise term runs 10 years. This is a small, tightly controlled operation where any software sale will likely be a single-decision-maker, low-velocity process.

Who controls software purchasing

The 2023 FDD Item 1 names three executives: Mark Zhang holds the title of Chief Executive Officer and President, Fan Zhang serves as Vice President of Business Development, and Wei Wang is the Operations Manager. In a 3-unit chain, the CEO and VP of Business Development are the most probable buyers for any software that touches financials, customer experience, or growth. The Operations Manager is the likely influencer for in-store operational tools. There is no CIO, CTO, or dedicated IT role on file, which means vendors should expect to sell directly to the ownership layer. No parent company is listed; the brand appears independently owned.

Mandated and current tech stack

The only technology system explicitly mandated in the FDD is the point-of-sale: Clover POS by Clover Network, LLC. This is a hard requirement across all locations. No other mandated or recommended software vendors are named in the available extracts. For a vendor selling adjacent software—such as loyalty, online ordering, inventory, or labor scheduling—the integration path runs through Clover’s app market and APIs. Any pitch that does not acknowledge the Clover mandate will likely be dismissed out of hand. The absence of other named systems suggests the brand may be running on Clover’s native capabilities or using unlisted, non-mandated tools.

Procurement, renewals, and timing

The FDD extract for Item 8, which typically describes procurement obligations, did not return a signal in our corpus. This means the brand’s policy on designated suppliers, approved suppliers, or open purchasing is not publicly known from the filing. Vendors should be prepared to navigate whatever procurement process the small HQ team has in place, which is likely informal given the unit count.

Renewal conditions, drawn from Item 17, are more concrete. A franchisee seeking renewal must be in good standing, provide timely advance notice, pay any then-current renewal fee, sign a new Franchise Agreement that may contain materially different terms and conditions than the original, be current in payments, sign a release, and modernize the shop to meet then-current standards. The renewal term is 10 years. The clause requiring modernization to then-current standards is the most relevant trigger for a software vendor: when a renewal approaches, the franchisor can mandate new technology as part of the updated standards. However, with only 3 company-owned units and no disclosed franchised locations, the near-term renewal pipeline is effectively zero.

How to read the Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart FDD

The full 2023 Franchise Disclosure Document is embedded below. This is the primary source for every data point on this page. When you review it, pay close attention to Item 11 for any additional franchisor obligations around technology that may not have surfaced in our extracts, and to Item 8 for procurement rules that could gatekeep a sale. The executive list in Item 1 is your starting point for outreach. Because the system is so small, the FDD may not contain the granular operational data that larger franchisors disclose, but it remains the only regulatory filing that binds the franchisor’s representations. For a ranked target list that puts this brand in context against higher-velocity franchise sales opportunities, FranCloud can help.