A Sapporo company named after its founder.

Royce’ began in July 1983 in Higashi-ku, the eastern ward of Sapporo, according to the company. Its legal name is Royce’ Confect Co., Ltd., and its president, the company’s own profile says, is Yasuhiro Yamazaki. The company says it was founded on a wish “to make chocolate in Hokkaido that is not inferior to the chocolate of Europe,” and it describes its principles in three words: quality, originality and price. By price it means chocolate people can enjoy every day, and it says it works on sourcing, production and packaging to keep prices stable.

The name comes from the founder. English and Japanese Wikipedia both explain it as an anagram of his given name: the syllables ya-su-hi-ro, read in reverse, give ro-hi-su-ya, and the final ya was read as the suffix used in the names of Japanese shops. The result, Wikipedia says, was spelled “Royce’s” in English and then shortened to Royce’ — which is why the brand keeps its apostrophe.

Growth was gradual. The company dates its first product to 1985: a thick plate of chocolate, each one wrapped by hand. Its first shop, at Higashi-Naebo in Sapporo, opened in 1992 by the company’s timeline (English Wikipedia gives May 1993), and mail order followed in 1993, prompted, the company says, by visitors who had bought its chocolate as a souvenir and wanted more. In 1999 it opened an online shop and launched its Baton Cookies, named, the company says, for the hope of a smooth handover as the factory moved.

Nama chocolate, made in Tobetsu.

The product the brand is known for is nama chocolate — nama means “raw” or “fresh” — a ganache of chocolate and fresh cream, cut into squares and dusted with cocoa powder, as the Michelin Guide described it in 2018. Royce’ says it began selling nama chocolate all year round in 1995 and calls it its signature product. Later lines took the brand in less expected directions: the company dates its Potato Chip Chocolate, crisps coated in chocolate, to 2002.

The chocolate is made in Hokkaido. In 1999 the company moved its factory to the Futomi district of Tobetsu, a farming town north of Sapporo, and in 2008 it started a raw-material factory at Ainosato in Sapporo’s Kita-ku, which now also houses its head office, the company says. Royce’ says it blends couverture made from cacao grown in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Venezuela, Ecuador and Vietnam, and that since 2014 it has run its own cacao farm in Colombia, which it calls a step from “bean to bar” towards “tree to bar.” In January 2026 it announced a limited chocolate made from its own farm’s cacao, with every stage handled by the company, in a release on PR TIMES. It is a member of the World Cocoa Foundation and of the Chocolate and Cocoa Association of Japan, it says, and it has fitted the Tobetsu factory with solar panels of up to 500 kilowatts.

Tobetsu has become the brand’s home in a literal sense. A station on JR Hokkaido’s Sassho Line, Royce’ Town Station, opened on 12 March 2022, built at the request of Royce’ and the town, Nikkei reported. The Hokkaido Real Economy news site quoted Yamazaki naming Hershey, the Pennsylvania chocolate town, as the model. Royce’ Cacao & Chocolate Town, a visitor attraction beside the factory, fully opened on 4 August 2023, Nikkei reported, and in April 2025 the factory site’s address was renamed “Royce’ Town,” the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

Japanese chocolate and its makers.

The seven brands in this group all sell chocolate, and they come from three countries: Royce’, Meiji and Morinaga from Japan, Garoto, Cacau Show and Kopenhagen from Brazil, and Ibarra from Mexico. Each guide looks at one name on its own terms, at home first and abroad second.

Chocolate brands reach people in different ways, and the differences show in their design. A mass-market confectioner sells bars and boxes through supermarkets and corner shops, where a wrapper has a moment to be recognised on a crowded shelf. A gift brand sells mainly through its own shops and counters, where the box, the ribbon and the shop itself carry much of the identity. A maker of a traditional product — a tablet bought for the kitchen rather than as a treat — may keep the same carton for decades, so that the package itself becomes the brand. Many firms do more than one of these things at once.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now, where its cocoa comes from and where its chocolate is made — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Shops in Hokkaido, an airport and the world.

Royce’ is a private company. Both Wikipedias describe it as unlisted, and its own profile names Yamazaki, the founder, as president; we found no record of a sale in the sources we checked. It sells in an unusual way for a brand so widely known in Japan: its own shops are in Hokkaido only, the company says, while customers elsewhere in Japan buy by mail order, online or at department-store fairs. It also sells in Hokkaido’s airports and souvenir shops, and in 2026 it advertised a mobile shop touring regions from Tohoku to Kyushu. A 2019 study in the journal of Hokkai School of Commerce, cited by Japanese Wikipedia, found Royce’ well ahead of every other Hokkaido confectioner by sales.

The airport is part of the brand. In 2011 Royce’ opened Royce’ Chocolate World at New Chitose Airport, Sapporo’s main airport, combining a chocolate factory that the company calls Japan’s first inside an airport with a museum, a shop and a bakery. A sister brand, Royce’ Ishigakijima, is sold on the southern island of Ishigaki in Okinawa, Japanese Wikipedia says.

Abroad, the company dates its first overseas shop to Singapore in 2001 and its first in New York to 2012. The reach has limits: in early 2020 Royce’ closed its nine shops in South Korea, The Korea Times reported, citing falling sales during a boycott of Japanese goods.

For a design guide, Royce’ shows how a regional maker can build a national brand from one place and one product. Compare Meiji, the Tokyo confectioner whose milk chocolate turned 100 in 2026, and Morinaga. For this guide we use a ganache brown, a snow cream and a muted gilt with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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