What results did Rice Junky Katsu see from their Upswell re-opening campaign?

Rice Junky Katsu went from $600 in daily sales pre-remodel to $4,000+ per day for two weeks after the Upswell campaign. The waitlist crossed 120 people, Mondays became fully packed, and the campaign's Reels content cleared 1 million views.

Case studies

How Rice Junky Katsu went from $600 to $4K+ days after their remodel

Rice Junky Katsu's pre-remodel daily revenue was $600. After Upswell's coordinated re-opening campaign, sales hit $4,000+ per day for two weeks, the waitlist crossed 120 people, and the campaign's Reels content cleared 1M+ views. Mondays — traditionally the slowest night — went fully packed.

Diners at a packed Rice Junky Katsu after the Upswell re-opening campaign

The challenge

RJ Katsu was finishing a full remodel. The space was new, the menu was sharper, and the team had earned the right to a relaunch. The risk was familiar: a beautifully remodeled restaurant that opens to the same trickle of weekday customers. Slow weeknights had been the baseline — $600 a day wasn't going to fund a remodeled future.

The team had two needs from a relaunch campaign: a visible moment that the neighborhood couldn't miss, and a measurement system that could prove whether the moment actually moved revenue.

The playbook

Upswell ran the full Splash framework, calibrated for a re-opening:

Strategy first. A sit-down to map the trade area, identify the diner profiles most likely to convert, and time the launch window for the moment with the highest natural foot traffic in the neighborhood.
A coordinated creator wave. Vetted local creators who already cover the neighborhood, each assigned a unique tracking code so attribution wasn't guesswork.
Hyper-local ad amplification. The creators' content was boosted by an ex-Meta ads PM running targeted local campaigns — the difference between organic reach and reliable view counts.
In-store capture. Followers who came in to redeem the trackable codes shared their info at the table. That data fed a CRM the restaurant kept.

The numbers

$600 → $4,000+ per day, sustained for two weeks.
120+ people on the waitlist at peak.
Mondays fully packed — the night the restaurant had previously written off.
1M+ Reels views across the campaign creator content.

Rice Junky Katsu dining room packed during the re-opening campaign

Creator content from the Rice Junky Katsu re-opening Splash campaign

What changed after

The two-week revenue jump matters for the headline, but the more interesting number is the customer list. The same playbook that produced the line also produced a CRM of who came, what they ordered, and how to bring them back. The re-opening wasn't a single spike — it was the moment that turned RJ Katsu's baseline into a sustainable new normal.

This is what a closed-loop campaign looks like in practice. Each customer brought in becomes inventory you can re-engage. The campaign cost is amortized across a multi-month customer relationship, not a single night.

Run the same playbook for your restaurant

Upswell's Splash framework is the engine behind every case study. For your re-opening, opening, or anchor moment, talk to the founder about scope.

Talk to the founder