Last week in class, we touched on how convenience stores in Japan impact consumers’ daily lives. In fact, it is true that in those convenience stores, consumers can get access to many things, such as printers, high-quality deserts, ATMs, original branded groceries, and even one-day car insurance. However, on the other hand, Japanese convenience stores are facing severe food-loss problems.

According to LAWSON, the giant in the convenience store industry, they are wasting about 5.2kg of food every day. The number itself might not seem like a lot.; although did you know that there are more than 56000 stores in Japan? Therefore, convenience stores create about six hundred tons of food loss every year.

It is pretty obvious that this situation is not sustainable, and to avoid getting into the same trouble, corporations who are interested in opening new convenience stores need to learn from two massive failures in Japanese convenience stores.

（image from https://acceliv.com/2021/06/convenience-store-next-to-the-convenience-store）

The first failure is the failure to build the right amount of stores. To people who have never lived in Japan, 56000 stores might not seem too much for a country with more than 120 million people. However, the reality is different. Most convenience stores are closely placed in major cities in Japan and not much in the countryside. According to the statistics by GraphtoChart, there are about 2 times more convenience stores in Tokyo than in Kanagwa, even though the population of both cities does not have a massive difference. Thus it is often the case that customers see convenience stores every 50m, especially in Tokyo, which does not make sense from a sustainability perspective.

The second failure is their policy. Most giant in this industry upholds the policy of providing high-quality food to customers because that is what the giants are seen from consumers worldwide. This policy is fantastic for customers who love eating and enjoying their meals but not for the environment. Due to this policy, stores try to provide the freshest meal they can. This leads to stores throwing away their meals quickly after the food has passed the expiration date and exchanging it with new ones. Some companies are working to solve this problem by opening a cafeteria for local children and using AI to calculate the precise amount of food to make. Still, it not creating a decent impact so far.

These are the failures that convenience stores in Japan have fallen. It might be too late, but I hope they will not make the same mistake when expanding overseas or creating a new strategy to solve one of the two problems.

Japan: number of convenience stores 2021 | Statista

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/479/#:~:text=The%20first%20is%20Japan%27s%20labor%20shortage%20and%20the,away%2C%20the%20owners%20shoulder%20most%20of%20the%20losses.

https://graphtochart.com/japan/tokyo-convenience-stores.php

https://naganotabi.com/vs47_conveniencestore

Shelf Lives and the Labors of Loss. Food, Livelihoods, and Japan’s Convenience Stores (ebrary.net)

The 3 Major Convenience Store Chains In Japan | MATCHA – JAPAN TRAVEL WEB MAGAZINE (matcha-jp.com)

https://www.lawson.co.jp/company/activity/environment/preservation/waste/

https://acceliv.com/2021/06/convenience-store-next-to-the-convenience-store