JAPAN: Popularity of Take-out Food Reflects Social Changes

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 21 2002 (IPS) - Business is booming at Midoriya, a bustling natural food restaurant in Meguro, residential Tokyo, where customers pile in to get their packets of prepared food or ‘sozai’.

“My take-away counter makes at least double the sales from the main restaurant,” beams owner Harumi Mitsuya, whose western and Japanese dishes range from 350 to 500 yen (2.7 to 3.8 U.S. dollars). “I just would not have survived without this new business.”

But more than a profit-making business for Mitsuya, the popularity of ‘sozai’ in big Japanese cities these days – a recent trend in a society where food is often prepared at home – says much about the changes in society and in families.

“The popularity of prepared foods stems from the growing number of working women who not have the time to cook, a major change from the traditional role of the homemaker, ” says Michiko Murase, spokeswoman for the Japan Sozai Association.

“The other reason is the long economic recession as take-away dishes help customers to save their money,” Murase added.

She adds that as life becomes much more fast-paced in cities, the convenience offered by ‘sozai’ comes in handy for the larger numbers of working women as well as singles who prefer take-out to cooking because it saves time.

“Fifty years ago, women took pride in producing home-cooked meals for their families. Now the criteria for a good wife is how she well she manages her career and household chores — cutting costs on food but still continuing to serve tasty dishes,” she said.

‘Sozai’ includes all kinds of cooked dishes, ranging from staples like rice, bread and pasta, to food that can be eaten with them, such as hamburgers, dumplings, salads.

While the take-aways of American or Chinese food have been around, many of the ‘sozai’ that has caught the consumers’ fancy in the last few years are those that Japanese homemakers used to prepare at home.

Indeed, most of Mitsuya’s customers are mostly working women and mothers, who make a beeline to the delicatessen on their way home from work late evening. They spend between 800 yen (7 U.S. dollars) to Yen 2,000 or (17 dollars) per shopping session.

Midori Sekiyama, mother of five and a public heath worker, is a fan of take-aways. “My husband works late and often I have to rush home to feed the children. A stopover in a department stores for prepared food makes life much easier,” she explained.

The beginnings of Mitsuya’s own restaurant come from friends and acquaintances who said they had no time to prepare food at home. “My friends work late and so prefer to eat out everyday, just like I used to do when I had a job. They said, why don’t you start a business making delicious dishes, and so I decided to do just that,” she recalled.

The Japan Sozai Association predicts that sales of ‘sozai’ are expected to increase 5 percent this year from 2001 to 6 trillion yen or 5 billion dollars in the current fiscal year that ends in March.

Customers also spend less than what they would spend at restaurants, but get good value.

“Dishes are the same price as on the restaurant menu. But they save on the wine, which usually makes up almost half the bill. Some busy women buy prepared food as a supplement to the main meal at home, another way of cutting costs,” Murase explained.

Yet it is not only small owners who are relying on changing consumer trends to make money in the recession.

Large department stores report that competition is fierce in their take-out food business, which is rising between 30 to 40 percent annually in the last two consecutive years.

Daimaru, a fashionable department store right in the Tokyo station, reports that the introduction of two shops in its basement food section in May last year now accounts for 20 percent of food sales.

Kakiyasui Honten Co., an operator in ‘sozai’, reports that the firm’s sales soared 105 percent in the first half of the current year to Sep.30 a year before.

Take-away dishes that cost half of the prices at Nadama, an expensive Japanese food restaurant, is also hugely popular with department stores customers.

A similar boom is recorded at Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza area. The gleaming food section, renovated in April to include more shops selling dishes from most upscale restaurants across Japan, has been reporting a month-to-month increase in sales for the past six months.

But the popularity of ‘sozai’ also has another fillip to it – something that may not totally perturb Murase, of the Japan Sozai Association. She says that since a lot of young people are moving into the cities to marry or work, the day may actually come when more women will not know how to cook.

Quips Murase: “I wouldn’t laugh too loudly at the prospect of the future Japanese home not having a kitchen as more women prefer to rely on prepared foods.”