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As the restaurant industry is a representative service industry, long-living restaurants could carry the secrets of key factors that are needed to establish “sustainable business models” in service industry. The authors aim to answer the following question: How can restaurants innovate business model sustainably to last for more than 50 years through the era of digital transformation with open innovation dynamics?

Five long-lived restaurants from Daegu, Kyoto and Naples were selected separately by using the snowballing approach, and were analyzed through in-depth interviews and participatory observations.

Restaurants in Daegu have lived long mainly because of adding value to their recipes. Restaurants in Kyoto have lived very long, primarily by decoupling their original services, ingredients and recipes. Restaurants in Naples have enjoyed long lives by coupling or recoupling their ingredients, services and recipes.

The implication is that long-living restaurants or service firms could maintain their own sustainability by dynamically circling the following services: (1) adding and boning recipes (focusing on special menus or products), (2) coupling of ingredients (creative recoupling of original ingredients) and (3) decoupling of services (disconnecting the value chain and rebalancing it).