HokBen Brand Guidelines: Hoka Hoka Bento’s 1985 Jakarta Start and the 2013 Short Name

A Jakarta takeaway counter with a licensed Japanese name.

HokBen opened as Hoka Hoka Bento on 18 April 1985, at Kebon Kacang in Central Jakarta, under the company PT Eka Bogainti, according to the company’s milestones page and Indonesian Wikipedia. Its founder, Hendra Arifin, worked in the automotive sector in the early 1980s, detikFinance reported in June 2025. He saw that eating at Japanese restaurants was costly at the time, went to Japan to study the idea and bought the Hoka Hoka Bento system and brand there. Indonesian Wikipedia says he took a licence from a Japanese company, named there as New Life Hot Food’s, to use the mark and receive technical assistance.

The name describes the food. Indonesian Wikipedia explains that it comes from hokaben, a Japanese word for bento sold to take away, with “hoka” referring to the warm rice in the box; the term was popularised by Hokka Hokka Tei, a Japanese takeaway chain founded in 1976. The first Jakarta outlet also began with takeaway orders only before adding seating, detikFinance reported. English Wikipedia stresses that, despite the Japanese-style menu, the ownership, management and cooks are Indonesian, with no Japanese involvement in the business; in March 2024 the company’s marketing director described HokBen to Kontan as an original Indonesian brand.

Growth outside the capital came slowly. The company dates its first restaurant in Bandung to 1990 and its first in Surabaya to 2005; in 2010 it opened in Central Java, in Yogyakarta, Semarang and Solo, and in Bali. Along the way it added a delivery call centre in 2007, a website with online ordering in 2008 and drive-through lanes at stand-alone outlets in 2009.

A tray, a line and a shorter name.

The brand changed its name in 2013. The company says that from 15 October 2013 Hoka Hoka Bento became HokBen, with a refreshed look, offers, service and surroundings. Indonesian Wikipedia cites the group head of marketing communications at PT Eka Bogainti as saying the decision followed customers’ suggestions for a name that was easier to say, and detikFinance noted that the public had long shortened it to HokBen. At the same time, Indonesian Wikipedia says, the restaurant look moved from mainly black and red to black, red, yellow and white.

The way food is served is part of the identity. English Wikipedia describes a cafeteria-style line in which customers move along with a tray to collect their dishes, unlike the counter ordering of most fast-food chains, and a menu of set meals and à la carte dishes adapted to Indonesian taste, with stronger flavours and sambal on the side. Indonesian Wikipedia lists dishes including beef yakiniku, chicken teriyaki, ebi furai and ekkado, as well as desserts such as es ogura. The Kidzu Bento children’s set, introduced in 2008 according to the company, comes with toys, and English Wikipedia says the logo and toys are based on Hoka Hoka Bento characters.

Behind the counters is a central production system. Indonesian Wikipedia says the company’s central plant is at Ciracas in East Jakarta, with hub plants in Bogor, Yogyakarta and Surabaya, and that ingredients reach branches through its own distribution; detikFinance named the same four locations in 2025. The company says it received a halal certificate from the Indonesian Ulema Council, MUI, in 2008, and a Halal Assurance System certificate from LPPOM MUI in September 2017.

How the category presents itself.

Indonesian restaurant, bakery, noodle, donut and café chains meet most of their customers in a small number of settings: the shopping mall, the airport, the railway station, the shophouse row and, increasingly, the rest areas along the toll roads. In each of these the shopfront has to work from a distance. A single dominant colour, a short name and a sign that can be read across a food court often do more of the identity work than any printed material.

Inside, the menu board is where a brand is defined. Chains in this category tend to name their dishes and drinks plainly, whether a fried rice, a noodle bowl, a bento set, a filled bun or an iced tea, and to group them into sets and children’s packages. Packaging follows the same logic: takeaway boxes, cups and bags carry the name and colours out of the room, and delivery-only kitchens and kiosk formats now let a brand trade with little more than a counter and its packaging.

The store network is itself part of the story the companies tell. Corporate pages often present history as a sequence of openings, a first outlet in a new city or on a new island, a numbered milestone store, and a running count of outlets and cities across the archipelago and, for some chains, abroad. Those counts change quickly, so each one needs its date attached.

Ownership is described in different ways. Some chains are run by a single private company that keeps every outlet in its own hands; others grow through franchise or partnership networks, and some sit inside larger food and drink groups. Founders’ stories, the operating company’s name and the halal certification a chain holds are commonly set out on the corporate pages, and the guides that follow give each of them only as the sources state them.

From Java to Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

HokBen spent its first three decades on Java and Bali, then moved quickly across the archipelago. The company dates its first store in Sumatra to 18 October 2018, in a mall in Bandar Lampung, followed by Medan and Pekanbaru in January 2020. Its 300th store opened in Padang on 1 July 2022. Its first outlet on Kalimantan, in Kubu Raya near Pontianak on 22 December 2022, was its 343rd, in 67 cities, and its first on Sulawesi, in Makassar on 7 April 2023, was its 355th, in 77 cities, the company says.

Independent reports track the count. Kontan reported on 13 March 2024 that the chain had not yet opened in Papua or Maluku because of high logistics costs. Indonesian Wikipedia gives 412 outlets as of 2026, including 74 HokBen Kitchen sites, in 24 of Indonesia’s 38 provinces. All HokBen stores are fully owned by PT Eka Bogainti and are not franchised, the company says, and detikFinance reported the same in 2025.

The brand now runs several formats. HokBen Kitchen, introduced on 23 October 2020, handles takeaway and delivery only. HokBen Express, formerly HokBen Kiosk, serves busy locations such as railway stations, Indonesian Wikipedia says. HokBen+, opened on 10 October 2024 at Grand Kota Bintang in Bekasi, adds a wider menu and self-order digital kiosks, and a second opened at Alam Sutera on 16 January 2025, according to the company. The name has also travelled beyond the restaurants: from 2016 HokBen boxed meals could be ordered on long-distance trains run by Kereta Api Indonesia, Indonesian Wikipedia says, and in November 2018 The Jakarta Post reported that Garuda Indonesia would serve HokBen meals in economy class on limited domestic flights from December to January.

For a design guide, HokBen shows how a long name can be shortened into a brand without losing its origin, and how a fixed colour set can travel to hundreds of company-run outlets. Compare Solaria, another Indonesian chain that runs every outlet itself, and KFC, whose Indonesian operator was already listed on the stock exchange when Kontan asked HokBen about a listing in 2024. For this guide we use red, charcoal, mustard and rice white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep HokBen’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.