Cost of rice is causing one restaurant to buy a $10K rice dispenser

Mas Torito never thought he’d care so much about a few grams of rice.

And yet, there he was, engaging rather than ignoring a vendor of a machine that dispenses a precisely measured amount of piping-hot, steamed rice. At nearly $10,000, the cost may seem steep considering that a few morsels of rice is just cents at the grocery store. 

But Torito runs Kokoro, the homegrown Japanese restaurant that his parents started in 1986. There are two locations, in Denver and in Arvada. They serve about 1,500 bowls of rice a day.  

“It dispenses rice to within, I think, two or three grams or whatever amount you specify, and it drops it into your bowl,” Torito said. “It’s the exact amount of rice every single time.”

High Cost of Colorado

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