Outside many restaurants in Japan, you can often find some incredibly high quality plastic food samples. Some of them look so realistic, you might even confuse them for actual food. Outside of their impressive looks, they are very convenient in providing an instant snapshot of a restaurant's menu to customers, and can be a lifesaver for those who don't understand Japanese.

Food writer and researcher Shinichiro Nojima (@aochins8) recently found quite the unique use for them at popular Japanese curry chain CoCo ICHIBANYA (called Cocoichi for short) that many on Twitter are hailing as a genius marketing.

When stopping by Cocoichi for lunch, Nojima just had to take a picture of the curry house's clever use of food samples as a way of marketing.

"Today's lunch is at Cocoichi, but the marketing of placing a beer mug sample at each counter seat is just too strong."

Conveniently placed at each counter seat is a frothy beer mug "food" sample. Written on a label on the mug in Japanese is "Don't worry about that stuff, there's beer!", hoping to coax customers to order one with their curry using the visual appeal of a refreshing cold one right in front of them.

The creative use of the beer sample within the store as opposed to a simple display outside was a big hit with many beer lovers on Twitter, who left comments such as "this is an underhanded tactic!" and "that's too hard to resist!"

While not all Cocoichi restaurants use this method of advertising beer, the Kita-Urawa Station location that Nojima encountered this at is one that does. The restaurant noticed the amusement and viral attention on Twitter, and sent out a Tweet saying their are seven label tags on the beer in total, so to come on down to check them out.