To state the maybe-not-obvious here: beef croquettes are frying up a thing and fundamentally are totally fine and delicious with any meat. They of course taste

To state the maybe-not-obvious here: beef croquettes are frying up a thing and fundamentally are totally fine and delicious with any meat. They of course taste _better_ with better meat, but it's honestly a bit of a waste of very high quality meat. To state a more obvious thing: you can sell many croquettes, but selling larger portions of beef means you are gong to be involved in less transactions per yen. And the margins are going to be much better anyways. Another thing that is true with more family oriented businesses is that the objective is often not to maximize profit. Of course people want sales, and healthy and stable businesses, but Japan in particular is rife with stories of something becoming very popular all of a sudden and the restaurant owner just gets overwhelmed and overall is negative on the extra business. This is probably the top point, the whole exercise of running a butcher is up to the personal whims of the people working there, and so often is not about min-maxing.