KIRIP TRUMAN: Video, hip-hop and a unique website. A new approach to the bar industry!

Toru Kiriyama of KIRIP TRUMAN first attracted attention with his stylish cocktail-making videos and creative mocktails. A multi-talented creator, Kiriyama's aims and vision seem to go beyond the confines of his own restaurant. What is he thinking about to boost the bar industry?

writer：Akihiko Nishio　撮影：Naohiro Kurashina

Here's what daytime looks like for KIRIP TRUMAN!

Pursuing new possibilities for mocktails.

'Kitahama, where KIRIP TRUMAN is located, has a lot of cafés, and there are queues at the popular ones. It suddenly occurred to me that a mocktail bar would also be interesting."

However, no properties of note could be found in Kitahama.

In September 2019, he opened The Mocktail Bar MORI (now TMBM), Japan's first mocktail bar, less than a 10-minute walk from Kitahama, near the lush Utsubo Park in the Honmachi area, also a business district.

'Maybe mocktails weren't as well recognised as I thought they would be, or maybe it wasn't such a hot topic at the time. But I'm glad we got an early start as it turned out.'

Having taken action since 2019, Kiriyama-san has come to be recognised as a leading figure in the Kansai mocktail world.

'By sending out mocktails, my horizontal connections have expanded, and I have more opportunities to travel to Tokyo for bartending, as well as more corporate projects.'

Currently, he is an advisor to a certain shochu company and supervises recipes for the 'mocktail corner' of LIFE, a major supermarket, among many other corporate projects.