Cainz opens its 31st Gunma store next to the country's top-ranked rest stop
Cainz opens an 8,717-square-metre store in Maebashi on October 28 -- its 31st in Gunma, the prefecture where the chain was founded -- next to a rest stop the company says was ranked Japan's best in the 2026 Michi-no-Eki Grand Prix, another marker in the home-improvement chain's roadside build-out.
Cainz said it will open Cainz Maebashi Akagi Mall, an 8,717-square-metre store in Maebashi, Gunma, on Wednesday, October 28 -- its 31st store in the prefecture and sixth in Maebashi city, according to the company's announcement. The store sits on a site adjoining Michi-no-Eki Maebashi Akagi, a roadside rest stop that Cainz's release says was named overall No. 1 in the 2026 national Michi-no-Eki Grand Prix. The new store has 291 customer parking spaces and a staff of 114, led by store manager Hiroshi Kujima.
Cainz said the adjacent rest stop's cafe has sold more than 35 million muffins cumulatively, and that the company signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement with Maebashi City in October 2024. Cainz, founded in Gunma, now operates 280 stores across 29 prefectures, the company said.
Opening next to a facility the chain itself calls the country's top-ranked rest stop is a deliberate pairing, not a coincidence of geography: roadside retail increasingly competes for the same drive-in shoppers that once filled suburban department-store and shopping-centre car parks, and a 31st Gunma store -- in the prefecture where Cainz began -- shows how deep that roadside build-out already runs in its home market before it is replicated elsewhere.