Tapped out: Asahi beers running dry in Japan as cyberattack shutdown lingers

By Joseph Campbell and Kentaro Okasaka TOKYO, Oct 3 (Reuters) – Japanese restaurants, bars and stores are running low on beer and other beverages from industry leader Asahi Group as the impact from a cyberattack entered a fifth day on Friday, with no resolution in sight. Known for its Super Dry beer, Nikka Whisky as well as non-alcoholic beverages, Asahi suspended operations in Japan on Monday including order processing, shipping and call centre functions after a cyberattack caused a system outage. The company began processing orders for some products on Wednesday by visiting customers in person and handwriting orders, it said. While it continues to take orders for food and soft drinks, it has not taken further orders for alcoholic beverages to prioritise outgoing shipments, which began on Friday for the first batch of manually filled orders, it said. Asahi said it continues to work with investigative authorities on the cyberattack. On Friday in Tokyo, one eatery that normally only serves Asahi-branded beer said it was on its last keg of Asahi Super Dry, and that its supplier brought beer from rival Sapporo a day earlier, citing the shortage. "It's a bit of a problem," said Tomiko Yano, a chef at restaurant Kushiyaki Tosaka. "We specialise in yakitori (skewered chicken) and it pairs really well with Super Dry. A lot of customers say that, so I'm a little worried (about the shortage)." Convenience store operator Lawson said it was expecting a shortage of Asahi products soon and it was making preparations to sell alternative products. FamilyMart and 7-Eleven also said they were affected. (Reporting by Joseph Campbell, Kentaro Okasaka and Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

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