I was just in Japan two weeks ago, and convenience stores were omnipresent. I'll admit, it was incredibly convenient, as I never went for lack of food or water, and I got into habit of grabbing a beer and a snack every night to take back to my hotel room before bed. I was relying on them (and vending machines) pretty heavily for coffee and green tea throughout the day as well.
There were way too many convenience stores that were open in the middle of the night, though (and apparently this is a requirement on the franchisees). There was a 24/7 convenience store on the first floor of my hotel, and then another one down the block, and then several more within a two block radius. There's no reason they couldn't all coordinate better so that each individual store is only open through the night a couple times per week. That would make a lot more sense. Most customers would still be able to reach an open convenience store, even in the middle of the night, within a few blocks walk. It'd be nice if stores had posted the hours of nearby stores so you'd know where else to go if the one you wanted was closed, but that's probably unnecessary now in the age of apps (I had no problem finding opening times for places on Google Maps).
Pharmacies in Poland all operate on this rotating schedule, where at least one pharmacy in town is open 24h(they always post a sign saying where the nearest 24h pharmacy is). I have no idea if it's by law or just a thing that everyone does.
Are you sure about that fact? Pharmacists went on strike in Netherlands this year. Another reply mentioned Poland. It seems there's no EU rule, or maybe it's more that some still need to be open.
The majority of what a pharmacy provides is repeat customers anyway. Despite regular customers planning badly pretty much all the time, the majority gets their medicine for a minimum of various weeks.
The participation of the strike in Netherlands wasn't high. It was pretty last minute idea by one frustrated worker. The reason was the increase in the aggression towards the people working in a pharmacy.
Poland is not part of it then.
What does have to happen is that emergency or base services are sustained. That is the one 24h pharmacy. All others can just close.
Similar with doctors in hospitals, as long as emergency service works fine strike is allowed.
Being a pharmacy contracted to dispense public health service prescriptions is probably contingent on either providing out-of-hours service or being part of a rota that does that. It's that way in lots of countries.
It exists. Pharmacies open late on rotation here with one being available late night. IIRC in some places it's a hospital pharmacy that you can get a prescription from if it's an emergency. You can find open pharmacies here: https://beta.nhs.uk/find-a-pharmacy/ or call 111 if urgent.
> There's no reason they couldn't all coordinate better so that each individual store is only open through the night a couple times per week. That would make a lot more sense.
You incorrectly assume their primary goal is to provide service to customers.
Their primary goal is to maximize profits, and in a saturated market the only way to do that is by trying to take market share from the competition.
It's questionable if you're going to get any profit at all when you have to pay someone to man the store at odd hours when there's almost no customers. A few people coming in during the late-night shift and buying $3 worth of stuff each is not going to pay that employee's salary.
Have you read the article? The franchise pushes the store owner to make it work anyway, and since the employee's salary would eat his profit, he cannibalizes his free time and sleep instead. The franchise contract is probably structured in a way that the franchise company profits even from stores that are themselves barely profitable.
And in a market where the parent company doesn’t protect area rights, your competition can be other stores of the same franchise. Something about that seems wrong.
Depending on how the franchise contract is structured, the parent company may profit from every store, no matter how little profit that store itself makes, because of things like having to buy supplies and equipment from the parent company at inflated prices.
I studied this as part of my degree. It's mostly the ice cream vendors problem, where apparently the franchises would prefer to saturate a smaller area with competitors than a larger area with no competition.
It's probably an oversimplification but it is painfully evident when walking around metro areas of Japan.
Because if you operate near your competitor, you can take market share from him without losing the customers that are now farther away from you (because you are still closer to them than your competitor is, and their demand is inflexible).
The same reason why the last Price is Right bidder will sometimes bid $1 more than the existing highest bid in the qualifying round.[0] It takes out one of the three other competitors, unless their guess was exactly correct.
The first ice cream vendor sets up in the center of the boardwalk, to minimize walking distance to all available customers. The second vendor sets up immediately adjacent, to take half the customers, who will stop at the nearest cart instead of walking another 2m. The third vendor, sets up on the opposite side from the 2nd, and then the first loses all their customers. So the first relocates to the other side of the 2nd, and they lose all their customers. Then the 2nd relocates to the other side of the 3rd.
The vendors should really cartelize, divide up exclusive territories, and collude to drive out newer competitors. But whenever the cartel breaks down, or none is active, the individual vendors are constantly trying to cut each others' throats by taking market share from the others. Each ice cream vendor cart needs a certain length of boardwalk territory to remain in business, so any two colluding vendors could force another to move by bracketing the target on either side. The game gets increasingly complex as you add more players, and more so when adding a second dimension, such that the vendors have a territory area, rather than a length.
Secoma is pursuing a strategy of claiming territories too small to support a greedier store, such that 7-11 can't carve away pieces of it without destroying itself and making no gains, whereas 7-11 is pursuing a strategy of sacrificing some of its stores to destroy all of its competitor stores, so that the survivors can divide the secured territories amongst themselves.
The game is like Go, but in real life. Instead of a grid on a board, the moves are putting a franchise store location down on a map. Pieces that are surrounded are removed. Scoring is by profit rather than by territory.
[0] In the qualifying round of Price is Right, 4 contestants try to guess the retail price of an advertised product, as closely as possible, without bidding greater than the actual retail price. The winner is then allowed to play one of the prize-awarding games.
I was there about a year back and I too remember thinking why they had so mayn vending machines, and also at seemingly odd/random spots. It felt a bit shady buying alcohol from a vending machine without showing ID, but maybe thats just cultural conditioning..
Don't underestimate the safety factor. Walking around late at night past scores of open stores presents a significantly different backdrop to other cities around the world where everything is closed and all the lights are off.
I also just came back from Tokyo and Osaka; I was blown away by how many 7/11s there were and how close they were.
The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.
Free public bathrooms everywhere was nice, but there was still a dearth of free public water fountains -- which, admittedly, most cities don't have enough of. Rome is kind of the gold standard in this regard.
I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold hot canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was interesting to have that as an option. There were also plenty of vending machines that would make coffee for you (which I didn't use because I opted for free coffee in the hotel in the morning and cold green tea thereafter, which I must say was delicious).
> Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it)
You just have to find the one type of can that doesn't have added sugar or milk. Once you know those nothing beats pulling a warm can of black coffee from the machine.
Really, the first company to introduce these on stations here in the Netherlands (or anywhere these don't exist) will turn a handsome profit if they stick to the Japanese formula for 自動販売機: small cans, low prices, decent selection, warm coffee, and located on train platforms. The novelty factor of the warm cans will take care of initial promotion.
> Once you know those nothing beats pulling a warm can of black coffee from the machine.
I'd say pulling a bottle of warm lemon / lime tea was even better, especially with travel-sore-throat.
> low prices
Aside from providing warm drinks, that's the big ticket right there: IME, european vending machines are basically predatory, they're way overpriced for what they provide and rely on necessity or impulse rather than just doing good business.
Japanese vending machines are omnipresent, well-stocked, with good selection of useful stuff, but more importantly you don't feel like you're throwing money down the drain when you're buying from one. The prices are obviously higher than in a 'mart, but they're not "$5 for a bottle of coke" overpriced.
"Aside from providing warm drinks, that's the big ticket right there: IME, european vending machines are basically predatory, they're way overpriced for what they provide and rely on necessity or impulse rather than just doing good business."
Absolutely agree: I don't remember the last time I bought something from a public vending machine (or even seeing someone else doing so) here in Spain.
Prices are anywhere between 2/3 times the price you would buy at a supermarket, an Airport shop kind of markup: whatever you get tastes bad as you feel swindled.
When I was in Japan it was rare if I didn't get something from a machine any given day.
Believe it or not, but even in Japan, vending machine prices are 2-3x what you’ll pay in a supermarket. You just don’t notice it as much because prices are low in general.
A supermarket can coffee will cost maybe 60-100円 for what you pay 120-200円 in a vending machine.
I was tracking the prices of vending machines pretty closely in Japan, and if you didn't jump at the first one you saw and waited until a more out of the way one, you could typically find almost anything in the 100-120 yen range. My favorites were the "100 yen special" machines where most or all items were 100 yen. The prices were in large red lettering to emphasize the deal. Prices could go up to 160 yen or higher in the vending machines in tourist areas, especially the ones inside ticketed attractions.
100-120 yen was around the price you'd pay for those same drinks in a convenience or grocery store, with the only exception being bottled water. You can find bottled water much more cheaply in the grocery stores than anywhere else, well under half the price by volume. This is a pretty universal rule of travel that I've found holds true everywhere.
Those 100 yen machines are rare. I lived in Kyoto, and can recall seeing only one in the city. People would go out of their way to use it. More typically, you will see machines that have 120円 prices by reducing sizes. Buy the same drink in the conbini next door, and you’d get twice the volume.
Regardless, if you’re in a place where vending machine prices are lower than usual, it only means that the store prices are lower still. There’s no magic here; the vending machine operators are making a healthy profit.
It did bother me that I could never tell what the actual size of the drink was going to be. Is it in kanji, or is it just not listed at all? I definitely had a situation where I was expecting a full normal sized bottle of green tea but got a smaller one.
Same here. I never buy from vending machines in the US or Europe. In Japan, the prices are low and the quality good, so I bought several things, including ice cream. There's no way I'd buy the garbage ice cream we make in America from a vending machine, but the stuff in Japan is pretty good and a nice treat on a hot day, and was only Y140.
Slightly OT, but I haven't heard this: are the vending machines in Japan dispensing real ice cream and not soft-serve? Very interesting, if so I would imagine the mechanics have to be far more robust/complicated. Or is it still soft-serve, but just higher-quality?
edit: by soft-serve, I mean any of the thinner ice cream/frozen yogurt alternatives as opposed to the (usually very thick) real ice cream.
No, the machines I got ice cream from were dispensing real, solid ice cream. They were shaped as cones and on sticks for easy handling, but they were real ice cream, not that soft-serve crap.
Yes, I imagine these machines would have to be pretty robust to maintain those temperatures in Japan's hot climate.
Note: some varieties actually had waffle cones; others did not. There were also handy recycling bins right next to the ice cream machines, placed by the vendor, just for the rubbish from that machine.
It affects my behaviour as a consumer. In Europe I tend to purchase snacks and lunch in supermarkets or convenience stores at the bigger stations before travelling (but rarely those on the platforms because of the prices). In Japan, I just get it from any convenience store (including those inside the gates) or the vending machines without a second thought.
I did get the black coffee can, and it wasn't good. I usually drink coffee black, but that's only when it's freshly made; I tend that I actually tend to prefer the premixed kinds that come with milk in them.
There's just something about being brewed potentially months ago, and then kept at an elevated temperature for many days, all the time in an aluminum can, that doesn't lead to good tastes. It tasted metallic. And interestingly, it was actually hard to hold (and even open) at first, because it was hot, being an uninsulated aluminum can that was in a heater. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I could even hold it firmly in one hand without having to juggle it around a lot.
That tended to be the only place I found them, and yes, I definitely filled up my water bottles there.
This tip tends to work for all countries, not just Japan. Look for green parks on Google Maps, especially named ones, if you're trying to find water fountains.
Depends on the country but it's generally a "thing" in Asian culture to prefer warm water or tea for drinking. Combine that with a mistrust of the tap water and you get nobody wanting water fountains.
Taiwan has them in train stations but nobody would trust them if they didn't have a chart on the wall with a detailed report of the weekly water quality inspection.
There is that, but Japan definitely has potable water (as does Korea, Singapore, maybe Hong Kong). Also SE Asian countries don't bother with hot water as much as northeastern ones, but they generally don't have potable water regardless.
The airport in Beijing has a hot water dispenser but I've never seen anyone use it.
I've spent time in Bangkok for several weeks now, and although it seems like it is safe to drink, I've talked to a lot of locals that are buying bottled water too.
Also, the smell of chlorine, when you turn the tap on, is enough for me not wanting to try it.
that's not true. There are only a few countries in south-east asia with drinkable tap water: brunei, hong kong, japan, singapore, and south korea. You should probably not have drunk that water in Bangkok.
Even within a country, whether a specific city has potable water or not can vary. Bangkok technically has potable water from its source, but the pipes it might travel through can be broken and dirty (the same is true in Beijing, actually). In this case, you can get lucky...but it is better not to chance it.
IMO the vending machines aren't the future; they're the manifestation of a different future.
When cities start industrializing, one of the first things that consistently pops up are food vendors on the street taking up public right-of-way. Food preparation is a skill that doesn't need education, people working the long shifts of industrializing societies need to eat quickly, and new city-dwellers miss their regional foods, so poor provincial migrants quickly start hawking whatever they can sell on the street.
As cities grow up, they start viewing street food vendors as unhygenic nuisances. Some cities license them (New York's street carts), others try and corral them into more formal, permanent setups (Singapore's hawker food centers), and some just attempt to ban them altogether (tried in Bangkok.)
Vending machines are a unique response to the Japanese need for quick food; they're small enough to fit on tiny Japanese streets, they have no labor requirements in a country suffering from unskilled labor shortages, and there's no need to waste time doing the Japanese customer-service pleasantries with an inanimate object.
The American future would be the food truck. Food trucks have changed the dining scene in many areas, because a food truck and a permit is significantly cheaper than commercial leasing. And it works in the American context because American cities are full of wide streets with loads of parking, and there's lots of cheap labor to staff trucks with. But it would never fly with Japan, the same way Japanese vending machines would probably get vandalized in their first week on an American sidewalk.
>But it would never fly with Japan, the same way Japanese vending machines would probably get vandalized in their first week on an American sidewalk.
Exactly: this is the same reason the wonderfully-appointed and utterly spotless Japanese public bathrooms are completely impossible in America. They'd be filled with graffiti, the washlet and other devices abused and broken, and dirty toilet paper left on the floor and urine sprayed all over within hours.
> canned mixed drinks! Japan is truly living in the future.
That's not just a Japanese thing. There was a minor and extremely silly political controversy a while back where someone took a photo of the British shadow Home Secretary drinking a canned mojito on a train.
I’ve noticed that the number of usable combini toilets is on a steep decline in major cities and tourist areas.
A few years ago they were all public and free to use at any time. Then English signs saying “Close the door. Don’t make a mess. Don’t stand on the toilets. Don’t do (xyz common sense thing)” started popping up. Then I saw a few saying “please alert staff if you’d like to use the toilets and we will give you a key”. Now most conbini in Tokyo suspiciously have two separate offices and zero toilets. If it’s an area with mostly foreigners, your chances of finding a toilet really fall off a cliff.
I've only found a lack of public toilets in conbini in notorious party areas/tourist locations (Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Shibuya, etc). Any conbini outside of those, or even just on the outskirts have usable toilets.
>One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.
Don't forget how almost every public restroom even has a washlet.
But we can't have these things in the US. Americans can't even be bothered to flush the toilet, and like to scrawl graffiti on bathroom walls. The only way we'd have the super-clean public bathrooms of Japan is to keep them locked, or have a pay-per-use scheme with cameras monitoring them to see who pees on the toilet seat without cleaning it.
Even pay-per-use won't solve that problem though. Have you ever been unfortunate enough to use a truck-stop shower? Not an experience I would recommend; after several weeks of motorcycle camping I started to think I would be better-served renting a cheap motel room.
The pay-per-use wouldn't solve the problem alone, but it'd keep some of the riff-raff out of there. But you'd need camera monitoring, and probably have it require the use of a credit card (so you know who used it, instead of just having a grainy picture of some person you can't identify), to make sure the bathroom stays clean.
Americans can't be bothered to pay for a janitor. Airports are a near constant flow of people using the bathroom, and they are fine because it's someones job to regularly come in and clean the resulting mess.
Janitors can't do anything about graffiti. There's no graffiti in Japan like there is in America; it's a cultural difference. People there are trained from a very early age in school to not destroy or disfigure things needlessly. Americans aren't taught any such thing, because we think that parents should be the only ones to teach values, not schools.
Yes, it is correct. Vending machines are generally 20% more expensive than conbini. A bottle of water is 98¥ to 120¥ at conbini while 120¥ to 140¥ in vending machines.
Just came back from Japan and man are there too many convenience stores. Within any given area there is probably 6 to 7 stores within eyeshot and an easy walk. It's weird thinking that they are too convenient, but honestly they start to become pointless. More than once we simply walked by a few knowing that there would be another one just a minute or two more down the street.
It's great that we could find something to eat at 2am when jet lag messed with our eating schedule and nothing else was open except the four 24-hour chain restaurants, 6 full-service Izakayas and a late night curry shop within a 5 minute walk. What would we have ever done without a choice of 6! different convenience stores within the same area?!
Oh and on the way there's vending machines literally jammed into every available urban crack that can fit one where I can service most of my beverage and a few food needs.
I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.
> Within any given area there is probably 6 to 7 stores within eyeshot and an easy walk.
That's just Tokyo and it's a very biased impression. Most places in Japan don't have that kind of density of combinis. I there there are about 55 000 combini in Japan, and there's probably 20% of that in Tokyo alone so you were in an area that's not representative of japan as a whole. In most other other cities there's rarely more than one combini at the same place, and you would not see 5-6 of them just by walking 5 minutes.
> I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.
Of course they earn money. They sell products with a high markup (like 30% more than everything you find in a supermarket), they have their own lines of products with even higher profit margins, and there's usually a density of population that guarantees a minimum of business viability anyway. Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
> In most other other cities there's rarely more than one combini at the same place, and you would not see 5-6 of them just by walking 5 minutes.
I live in a prefectural capitol in Southern Kyushu and yeah you're right - we only have 3 convenience stores in 5 minute walking distance. That's in a residential area and not in the central district where there are more.
I lived in a similarly sized city in Sweden and there was literally one single 24/7 convenience store in the whole city. And I think it closed.
> Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
Well obviously, they quickly become ex-owners. We have 3 convenience stores near our apartment that have shut down in the past couple years. They wouldn't shut down if they were profitable.
The cities I'm comparing in Japan and Sweden are of a similar population and density. It's a very small city by Japanese standards and the third-largest city by Swedish standards.
I think the differences are less superficial than that. Cost of labor certainly ties into it but also work culture (Japanese people tend to get out of work late)
Kyoto is also a megacity, so it's pretty much saying "Hey I live in another huge city in Japan and there's also a lot of combinis". You can say the same thing about Osaka, too.
Yeah, I stayed in Kyoto for a week about a month and a half ago. Wasn't even in the "downtown" spot, I was several blocks out, at least IMO.
But there were about 4 7/11's in a two block radius, Lawson's, Family Mart... All over.
I know so well because for one thing I tried to walk most of the time to wherever I went, and for another I enjoyed experimenting with different snacks/desserts every night from conbini.
I was in Kobe a few weeks ago and it was the same, all over the city center.
As a consumer honestly there is little to complain, they ARE very convenient.
But grandparent is correct: a lot of items are expensive for what they are (some of the "fresh" meals cost as much as a eating in a normal ramen/noodle place on the street), so you pay for the convenience.
> I was in Kobe a few weeks ago and it was the same, all over the city center.
That's only in Sannomiya. Go in Suma, Nada, Rokko, you won't find that many combinis within a very short walking distance. The city center is appropriate for this kind of density because there's 3 different train lines (and 4 if you consider the metro) stopping right at the same place transporting hundreds of thousands of people every day.
I mean, I lived there for 5 years of my life and go back often... the alternatives open at 2AM only really exist in the tourist areas or the uber dense areas (Shinjuku, etc). Past 2, you're pretty much only eating conbini food or a "family restaurant" like Denny's, Johnathans or Royal Host if you're lucky enough to be near a 24 hour one.
Okay, to be fair, I'm definitely talking about big downtown areas exactly like Shinjuku or Shibuya. But I'm also talking about places like すき家 and 松屋 which are pretty good late night drunk eats and we never failed to find a late night pub with crazy hours no matter where we were.
I understand if those places seem amenable to you, but I (and pretty much everyone I know who lived there long term) wouldn't set foot in one of those past their college years. They're horrible for your body. I'd sooner eat conbini food and pass out.
The late night pubs do exist, sure, but a lot of them stay open to capture any foot traffic from people missing their last train around midnight. Most don't serve full menus at that hour and it's usually a skeleton staff (short of, say, a HUB or something... but those aren't going to be open past 2, short of Roppongi & co generally).
Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake. After the power issues around the country, I noticed a lot of places never returned to their same livelihood. It's a shame, was fun while it lasted.
I'm mostly commenting at this point because the misconception of Japan being this constantly-on always-good-food crazy ass heaven is really tiring to see these days.
"Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake."
Really? This surprises me, given that the population of Tokyo has only continued to rise since then, and Tokyo wasn't nearly as badly affected as many other parts of Japan. How long did the power issues last following the earthquake, and why would they still continue to have effects so many years later?
The effects of the Lehman shock and 3/11 disaster hit the middle class hard, the blame is pointed at millennials for being thrifty (Why aren't young people buying luxury cars? Why do young people buy everything second hand?), but the reality is that middle class Japanese have less disposable income than 10,20, and especially 30 years ago
Japanese GDP now is ~$500B less than it was in 1995. [1] A country can't experience 25 years of economic stagnation as a whole and magically generate a large cohort of young people with money to throw around.
Things are a little better in purchasing power per capita terms [2], but not by enough to make a difference.
Changing economic conditions definitely makes a lot more sense to me. And activities in the middle of the night tend to be more expensive anyway (just think about bars and clubs), so you can save plenty of money by just going to bed and walking around for free the next day in the sunlight to hang out with your friends.
Like a bunch of other people in this thread, apparently, I was also in Japan about a month ago.
From what I saw, the whole place looked middle-class, and like everyone was doing fine. I think I might have seen one homeless person the whole time I was there (and I'm not sure about that; they were just begging, and didn't have a bunch of stuff with them); I saw more poverty in Germany, and I see far more in the US.
Japan's middle class might not have as much disposable income as it did in the 1980s, but from what I saw, it wasn't doing badly at all. It certainly looks a lot healthier than the US's middle class.
The other commenter in this thread did a good job explaining what happened re: economics, but a nitpick: just because I noted the power issues as a timeline reference doesn't mean I said it was why things went away.
> I understand if those places seem amenable to you, but I (and pretty much everyone I know who lived there long term) wouldn't set foot in one of those past their college years. They're horrible for your body. I'd sooner eat conbini food and pass out.
Regularly see elders in my local Yoshinoya. The Beef-Salmon set is good.
The OP isn’t being literal, but the point is correct: Yoshinoya seems great if you’re a tourist and you’ve had it once or twice in your life. But if you live there you begin to associate it with missed trains and late-night binge drinking. I had to be pretty wasted to eat gyuudon - even an old onigiri from a sketchy conbini was preferable.
Are there people who eat there regularly? Sure. There are people who eat Burger King every day, too.
The OP’s broader point about Tokyo not being a magical 24/7 wonderland is extremely well-taken. Tourists spend some
time in Shibuya or Shinjuku and extrapolate incorrectly. Hell...even Shinjuku can be a hard place to get a good bite at 3am on a weekday night. Most places there close shortly after the last train (~midnight).
Compared to what? Here in the USA there are several places within walking distance from my home that have a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks. One of them is an intersection where 3 of the 4 corners have a Starbucks. There's at least one building here with 2 Starbucks in it, in case taking the elevator is too much hassle. Japan doesn't sound all that much different in this respect.
To be fair, a Japanese convenience store is far more useful than a Starbucks. You can buy all kinds of things there, including healthy foods. Starbucks mostly just has overpriced coffee drinks and confections. At a conbini, you can get a healthy meal, and you can even microwave it there, you can get cash from the ATM, you can get a SIM card for your phone, etc. The two just aren't comparable.
A better equivalent than a Starbucks would be a pharmacy like CVS or Walgreens, which do stock light fare such as sandwiches etc. Most of this food is usually dry or unpalatable unlike the savoury foods available in Tokyo convenience stores. NYC will have a "dollar slice" pizza joint open til 3 AM or 4 AM depending on the neighbourhood.
In my smallish hometown there is a Waffle House (24 hour diner) across a small interstate bridge from another Waffle House. And then there are 2 more within a very short drive.
As the other person said, outside of major areas Konbinis are pretty much the only option to get anything at late. Other 247 stores are relatively rare.
I have visited Tokyo twice and the density is not that remarkable. There are corners and blocks of downtown Manhattan where there are multiple pharmacies, Starbucks, Chase banks etc all within eyeshot. Wherever there are lots of people squeezed into a small space, they need all these services readily available 24 hours a day.
The density of Manhattan is ~73,000/sq mi[1], whereas Shinjuku is merely ~48,000/sq mi and Shibuya is only ~38,000/sq mi. Note that Manhattan is much bigger than Shinjuku or Shibuya so this should actually work against Manhattan in these statistics.
I don't know about the Japanese figures, but want to note those figures for Manhattan are just the residential population. The "daytime" population that counts all the workers who come in is 5x that.
I agree, but it's worth noting that the density of after hours (as in 2 AM) food spots will usually be related to residential density and not commercial/office density. There will always be exceptions (e.g. the East Village) but I suspect they are the overwhelming minority.
Keep in mind the population density of Tokyo is around 6,224.66/km2 (16,121.8/sq mi). Not going to do the detailed math, but let's say each store has a customer base of a .5 square miles. That's over 4k population. That seems to be plenty of customers to justify the store placement.
They probably have the density and business to support it. Like how the USA having so many gas stations everywhere might seem bizarre to someone from another country (e.g. gas stations in China are definitely nowhere near as numerous).
To be fair though, most of those gas stations would be very happy to no longer deal with selling gas and would be more profitable as just convenience stores. There's nearly no profit from selling fuel, it's almost entirely used to increase traffic to the convenience store.
I was there a couple weeks ago and it is not as dense as Hong Kong or Bangkok. And thank god they had that many, otherwise the lines will be unbearable.
I currently stay in japan. The competition here is intense when it comes to food and drink. Every alley, even in residential areas in the back of the houses, has some mom & pop operated hole in the wall eatery. I never see more than two customers at many of these places at a time, but they stay open ungodly hours. I can't imagine they would be making more than $2-3 an hour on the average after all the costs.
A lot of family run retail shops all over the world/Asia seem to have this misconception that family labour is free, thus their employees/children/siblings are effectively working for below minimum wage.
One advantage of the prolific Japanese convenience store (or "konbini") is that any improvement in the underlying franchise system can be rapidly deployed to all franchisees (like nodes in a network). This is true of many franchises, but the konbini are exceptionally prolific, so this effect is magnified.
For example, if there is an opportunity to increase efficiency, or reduce costs or environmental impact, it would be relatively easy to deploy this throughout an entire franchise, as compared with heterogenous stores.
As for the issue of opening hours, labour shortages and demographic trends (the population is aging and decreasing) are significant. I am only aware of two likely solutions which are not mutually exclusive: (1) immigration; and (2) automation, ie. robots. Increasing the fertility rate might also address this issue, but seems less likely to happen.
I guess smaller opening times would also solve the issue. I have yet to understand why societies tolerate such things as stores open at 3am, given the productivity it has, and the implications for workers.
There's nothing inherently wrong with stores open odd hours. Some people like to keep odd hours, some have to because of the nature of their job (a lot of maintenance/repair/cleaning stuff is done at night), so some stores being open works with that. And of course there are places like clubs where night hours make more sense.
This situation in Japan seems unusual, usually a business would only stay open late if there was actually a reasonable amount of demand at that time.
It’s a bit brushed over and sprinkled in the article but this part was brutal:
> Last year, when Fukui Prefecture was hit by the heaviest snowfall in decades, it was discovered that a 7-Eleven franchise store was banned by the parent company from closing temporarily even after the store owner’s wife fell ill from overwork.
> He lost his wife in May last year and he “was on the verge of falling ill or dying from karōshi (death from overwork),” he said.
It summarizes for me how extreme the relation is between franchise and the owners, how little escape they have from that abusive bind.
It’s not clear no one wants them, since there is little data available to an ex-salaryman looking to open one in a particular neighborhood and if you do an unsophisticated “just watch a store all day” competitive analysis both a thriving store and a struggling store appear busy at all hours of day and night.
The franchisor is basically uniformly in favor of more locations since the franchisee bears most startup costs and the franchisor gets an effective call option on their cash flow.
(It’s also not clear to me that convenience stores are oversupplied relative to demand; there are probably some geographic mismatches but in e.g. this neighborhood in Tokyo you can find 3 in a Us city block and they’re self-evidently very viable. Which you might ask “How is that self-evident?” and I’m left to say “Trust me.”)
I guess it depends on how much data you'd expect someone to gather before opening a store.
I was under the impression opening a convenience store cost $50,000 or more, not an investment to make lightly IMHO. A few visits will tell you if the owner is working 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and you can estimate markups by looking at prices on the store shelves. And that's without looking for franchisees complaining online, or asking them in person.
I'm in Adelaide and convenience stores are not super common. There is usually one on each major street but nowhere near as much as the other states. When I was in Sydney it was a massive shock to see 711 everywhere. It was quite often to have 2-3 of them within my field of vision.
I don't understand the demand from the parent company to stay open late, given the lack of customers they clearly have and the oversupply of combini. I was at a 7-11 in Osaka by the dotonbori and it was basically vacant.
Like many things in Japanese society it seems to be because "this is the way it's done".
You live in a country with franchises, right? What would you articulate as the brand promise of a McDonalds? McDonalds has a very clear internal understanding of that brand promise: it includes clean bathrooms, a smile, extremely low prices available, and very consistent food.
7/11 also has a brand promise. It includes, prominently, “If you need it, 7/11 is open.”
The LTV of a conbini regular is very, very, very high and the brand does not want you to sour on it for reasons specific to Store 6548 in May 2019.
I wonder if this matters less in the age of smartphone apps. I tend to check opening hours on Google Maps first before heading to a place when it's outside of obvious business hours (like the middle of the night).
I don't think it does. Decreased friction provides a very real, very large boost to almost any business like this. Any uncertainty or mental effort makes me much less likely to go, especially if there's another option that I am certain will provide me what I want. Conversely, if they're reliable and require little effort, I am much more likely to grow to depend on them habitually.
I think that's probably the deal with a lot of 24-hour businesses. Letting it be known that you're always open may make sense even if the overnight hours aren't always profitable.
I suspect it's true for diners, for instance, and New York bodegas. Insomniacs drinking coffee aren't paying the bills, but they'll come back for lunch or breakfast.
Bars also often seem to stay open as late as they legally can, even if it's just the bartender and the town drunk on a typical night.
I understand what a franchise is. McDonald's regularly changes its menu, removing items that do not perform. McDonald's franchise owners can run menu items in areas that make sense for them. Hours for McDonald's are set based on demand and largely up to the franchise owner.
There are many examples of franchises allowing flexibility within the brand while still adhering to the brand ideals.
It sounds like 7-11 corporate for JP is uncompromising to a fault and unwilling to meet owners halfway.
Different franchises have different brand promises.
McDonald’s can maybe change its menu, and close at odd hours. They can’t, however, have their Big Macs taste different in Paris, London, or Riga. Nor can they remove the Big Mac from the menu outright, and serve only vegetarian spring rolls. That’s their brand promise, and they will not compromise on this.
If 7/11 has “we’re always open” as their brand promise, they will not compromise on it, even though they might be willing to meet owners halfway on other issues.
It’s not a great situation, especially for the poor guy pulling near-useless all-nighters. It seems understandable, though, why it’s happening.
I like the all day breakfast because it can be nice if I stayed up really late the night before and I'm getting "breakfast" at noon. I don't see the point of it past, like, 1 or 2 though.
The 24h mcd by me stops serving dinner at 2am, right when the drunks flood the lines and there are two people working the entire store. Possible reason right there.
I don't want to cast aspersions on Belgium, but that's atypical. My experience is that wherever you are in the world, McDonald's is usually reliable for its food (you know what you're getting, even if you're not a huge fan of it) and its decent toilets.
(I admit there may be some residual rose-tinted-ness to my opinion here, after staying on a Greek island years ago; after days struggling with the idiosyncratic local toilets (stinking holes in the floor; dirty paper in a bin, not flushed) the clean porcelain throne in the McDonald's in the capital was like an oasis in the desert...)
Continuing on your Greek tangent, Greek pipes are generally not built to handle paper products, therefore you are supposed to throw it in a small trash bin, which may sound disgusting but they generally are rather airtight and you honestly don't smell anything if you use them properly. The alternative is clogging the pipes, which from my experience living in multiple Greek cities, happens a lot especially due to the influx of tourists who don't know any better and/or ignore any signage.
In my experience (in the mid-90s), Greek pipes weren't even built to handle an above-the-median #2. And while a wastepaper bin was standard-issue adjacent to tourist-frequented toilets, a decent plunger was not.
Which seems odd, given how cheap plungers are in comparison to service employees.
From my own observations and talking with lots of residents, plumbers would come unclog at the street level or somewhere inside the lower floors of multi-story buildings. Most people I asked said it happened pretty routinely, sometimes multiple times per month. I'm not sure a plunger would help much for a blockage 20+ meters away.
Really? I don't recall ever having used a clean McDo toilet. I can clearly recall filthy toilets in France, Belgium & the UK. I'm not sure where you frequent McDo, but it sounds to me like your experience is more atypical than mine.
At least in the US, if I'm on the road and need to use the toilet I'll prefer to stop at mickey D's; I don't like the food so I'll often only buy a small order of fries but they're generally a very reliable bet as far as some of the most decent restrooms available.
They probably mean in Japan. Which to be quite honest was my experience while visiting for nearly a month two months ago. Bathrooms in general in Japan are very clean, and McDonald's is one of the great places with decent bathrooms to use there.
It's not just 7-Eleven. I wouldn't want to be a franchisee of any sort in the US. The power dynamic is horrible.
McDonald's is probably one of the better ones. But you're still beholden to them. They often own the land under the building, if not the building itself. They tell you exactly what you must do. They tell you when to remodel. They make you buy from their suppliers. They can decide to open another store a mile away from yours.
But longer term I think the worst franchise to be in will be car dealerships. Once EVs become mainstream, the service revenue will fall by about 80%. There's just so much less to go wrong. How will dealers be able to pay for the overhead of their giant buildings?
Chick-fil-A and McDonald's are two of the better ones. They don't give them to just anyone, and are careful about locations, too. To become a franchisee with them ,you have to have a proven record of success and have plenty of money in the bank.
Rule of thumb: the easier it is to obtain a franchise, the less it is worth.
> But quantity can’t obscure what one Chinese energy journal last month referred to as the industry’s “Quality-Gate” scandal. The numbers are damning. In 2018, Chinese manufacturers recalled 135,700 NEVs for a crushing 10.8 percent industrywide recall rate. Already this year, another 23,458 electric vehicles have been recalled.
> Batteries are the most common source of problems. Some don’t perform as advertised. Others drain unusually fast. Still others run dangerously hot. More than 40 NEVs spontaneously combusted in China in 2018.
> Other issues include faulty motors, faulty transmissions, faulty odometers and bad odors (a problem to which Chinese consumers are particularly sensitive). Most notably, according to market research firm J.D. Power, problems are far more common in Chinese NEVs than in traditional Chinese-made cars.
That's interesting with the EV's, a local cab company just went bust and they claimed it was the large repair costs that did them in. That and the closest workshop that could service them was 600 km away. I'm not sure how they would even get the thought of starting a cab service 600 km from the closest garage that could service the cars but that's another question...
The local 7-Eleven also went bust yesterday, together with their other store just a few blocks away. That corner of the city has plenty of other stores so it can't be easy to keep afloat. Town only has about 100 k people. (North Sweden)
When I was in Japan there were some cases of four 7/11s visible at once without turning my head, so I think you can set your sights a lot lower than a one mile radius.
I admire the courage of people who run their own business but I don't think that life would ever be for me. I love working 40-48 hours a week and leaving my work at work when I go home.
It would seem that this is ripe for automation, no?
In fact, I've been surprised for some time that there hasn't been a greater development/proliferation in this area. It would seem that a large (room-sized) refrigerated vending machine offering a range equivalent to a small convenience store is already highly technologically feasible, and would probably be far more cost efficient (smaller footprint, much lower staffing requirements) than running a convenience store.
Outside of Japan maybe, but it's something that would work in that culture. From my last trip to Japan a couple of years ago, I saw vending machines everywhere. In urban areas, there would be one every couple of city blocks in urban areas; I even encountered a few in the middle of park trails in relatively more secluded areas (e.g. more or less the middle of a forest). All these vending machines appeared unattended, but they always had inventory.
It always comes down to that, but what's stopping a company from hiring someone located anywhere in the world with a big monitor to stare at 20 feeds and just hit an alarm and call the cops when people get disgraceful? Have the cams only flip on with motion even. Could probably do it for dollars a day in some countries.
Inspite of having 7/11 at every nook and corner ( specially in Tokyo/Yokohama), it would be hard to get a sandwich, obento(お弁当) or onigiri if you go to a convenience store (コンビニ) just after peak lunch time.
Given it's 24/7, there's only 10 employees, and "the store will be in the red if he hired someone for night shifts", 17 hours a day seems plausible for the owner/manager (if somewhat unhealthy.)
It's a pretty solid assumption in economics that in an industry with perfect competition, profit margins eventually converge with the benchmark interest rate.
The irony is, of course, that the chain is named "Seven-Eleven" because it was originally open from 7 am to 11 pm.
> One Monday night in late March, only 10 customers came to the man’s store in the three hours before dawn, and the sales during that time were a little more than ¥6,000. The store will be in the red if he hired someone for night shifts.
Smart management would close the store during those hours. Of course, the franchise doesn't care for smart management - when the operator eats the loss.
I think what they're getting at is that if you want to operate a 7-Eleven, you ought to be absolutely reliably open at the expected hours. The intended alternative is to shut down the store. This man made a terrible business decision and is now stuck between a sunk cost and probably not a lot of alternatives for work.
That’s the problem with a lot of franchise agreements. So many things are set and specified for you that you have no room to optimize your business as an operator.
In a way, you’re almost just like an employee of the franchisor, but without any of the benefits and a lot more liability. But it’s a great relationship for the person selling the franchise.
Depending on the tax system, being able to structure yourself as a « business owner » can mean more money in your pocket than being a salaried manager.
I have a feeling that 'expected hours' would suddenly and magically stop including 1am-6am, if the parent company were on the hook for the operating losses the franchises are suffering.
But as long as they can make other people pay for their business decisions, that will, of course, not happen.
That would entirely defeat the purpose of franchising agreements.
The point is to diffuse risk, standardize the brand, and allow local owners to decide the things which don't affect the brand, in the service of their own interests (including whether or not to continue operating the location).
A franchise where the owner bears a small minority of the risk might as well just be centrally owned.
and where the franchise parent bears basically no risk at all is a pretty crappy deal for franchisees, who basically take what seems to be most of the risk (described in the article) for... 30% of the gross profit? maybe?
eventually, 7-11 will be known as a place where you're likely to encounter sick children lying on chairs at 10pm because the franchisee's family is living in the store. eventually that might actually damage the brand enough that they'd remove some of the stipulations.
The article specifically states that 7/11 is preventing various stores from not being open 24/7. E.g. small store, wife is utterly ill, 7/11 doesn't care; store needs to stay open.
It seems they like the owner exhausted so they cannot do the things which makes sense. E.g. to sell the food which is close to the expiry date instead of throwing it out. Yet another example from the article.
The article specifically states that 7/11 was preventing various stores from not being open.
“We will let the owners (of franchise stores) make the final decision (on whether to shorten operating hours),” said Seven-Eleven Japan President Fumihiko Nagamatsu.
There is a 7/11 near the Sapporo Zoo that is closed early in the evening.
Even for HN, these are some of the most empathy-deficient comments that I've ever read.
Yes, it's true that there is a huge problem with overwork for the franchisees.
But those stores aren't there (just) for you.
Imagine this scenario: you're over 80, living on your own and not very mobile.
The fact that there's a 7-eleven within 100 metres that sells a large variety of foodstuffs and essential items in single portion sizes allows one to maintain one's independence, which is a godsend. Try that in LA!
Japan values social-cohesion. Many of us who live here long term do too.
Edit: admit there's a problem for the franchisees.
Oh - update! I'm living in a farming & fishing village about 800 metres from the nearest combi.
After the local village shop shut down, the railway station 7-eleven started sending a van into the village once a week on a Wednesday afternoon so that the old people in the village could get their groceries.
No work is rarely the trade-off issue in Japan. They operate for quite different margins and labor practices than eg the US.
They haven't had an unemployment rate over 5.5% in 40 years. The typical rate has been 3% to 3.5% for the last 30 years - a time in which they've suffered from perpetual economic stagnation and zero net growth. It's around 2.5% right now.
Japan is losing population while simultaneously having an extraordinarily low unemployment rate. Automation is the only path forward, they should be pursuing it with as much vigor as possible. If you're Japan, as your population contracts, the ideal is to wipe out all convenience store jobs and push the labor force higher up the ladder whenever possible.
> Automation is the only path forward, they should be pursuing it with as much vigor as possible.
Well, they could always do more immigration. Its not like they don't do some already, and I think the Japanese will become much more open to it in the future.
How does your example explain how it would benefit an 80+ person that a franchise is open 24/7 or maybe 07:00-23:00? Especially as the owners themselves seem to be pretty old and in poor health because of the opening times.
A mile is a somewhat long distance to walk though. A hundred meters takes less than a minute, enough that I'll just pop out and get something random. the 10min++ to walk a mile is an exponential increase in friction.
Nobody walks in LA or most of california. You drive everywhere you need to go. CA is suburban with the exception of SF. A mile is a short drive. A convenience store every 100m is kind of excessive.
It depends on where you live. Tons of people go car free in CA, even in LA. Rent a car for the road trip, or a truck for ikea. A mile might be a short distance, but a long time and a longer park depending on the time of day. There are a lot more people motorcycling/biking/skateboarding/scootering in LA than ten years ago, because there are too many cars, not enough spots, and not enough space on the road to move them. And if you work downtown there are lots of places you can live that fall along the limited rail lines.
Well LA you typically have a car. Though not as convenient as japan there are definitely 24/7 convenience stores or supermarket spots within short driving distance to where I use to live.
> Even for HN, these are some of the most empathy-deficient comments that I've ever read.
That seems badly exaggerated, unless I'm missing some horrible comments. As for "Even for HN": this is the kind of putdown of the community that I feel compelled to respond to, since no one else will. Yes, people post unpleasant things to Hacker News, often without realizing it. But the overwhelming majority of users here are far from empathy-deficient, and relative to the rest of the public internet, particularly not. You might be running afoul of the paradox of HN being a non-siloed community, which I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19931510.
Putting down or dissing the community that you're participating in is actually a subtle form of vandalism: why should we bother taking care of it if it sucks so much anyhow? It's also a way of keeping one's distance from others: I'm not really part of this icky group—I'm here, but I'm better. Actually anyone here is as much a part of it as anyone else, and while many things happen that make one cringe, so do many things that bring out good in people. We should focus on the latter, because what we focus on grows, and the community's image of itself is pretty shaky. On HN, we also value social cohesion, and that involves bridging a great many wide divides. Only so much of that is possible, but it's precious and deserves taking care of.
Edit: sorry if it feels like I'm picking on you personally. That's not my intent at all. Your comment was otherwise excellent and the information you shared made this thread much better. I'm sorry to distract from that by responding to the least relevant bit. I hate doing that actually. But it's sort of a death by a thousand cuts thing, so we have to respond somewhere.
Thank you for articulating this. I've noticed these kinds of comments are common on reddit, and since becoming a mod of a reasonably popular subreddit they've irked me, but I allowed them in the interest of free-ish speech/not wanting to be authoritarian, and also because I couldn't articulate exactly what the problem was. After all, I didn't think criticism of a given subreddit was categorically bad.
This:
> It's also a way of keeping one's distance from others: I'm not really part of this icky group—I'm here, but I'm better.
is a brilliant way of putting it. Completely nails the impression. It's a passive-aggressive, condescending way of pushing yourself up by putting others down.
The problem is capitalism and not really 7-11. If 7-11 didn't do this, family mart would and the guy would probably lose his store altogether.
Capitalism doesn't care about people or the distress they feel during transitions. It's very effective at generally raising up the living standards of all people, but can be pretty inhumane at times when dealing with certain groups of people who's skills and services are becoming obsolete.
The only choice really is retraining and switching careers and having social safety nets. The other alternative, socialism, just spreads the pain across the entire world.
Our only realistic chance at reducing global poverty anytime soon is via capitalism. Sucks for this 7-11 owner, but that's how it goes.
Are you really sure that capitalism will reduce global poverty?
The core of capitalism is competition. This may result in higher quality and larger choice, but if these are sufficient enough it will in the end result in lower prices. This has to be done through efficiency but will also result in lower wages.
I think unconstrained, uncontrolled capitalism will result in 90% of the global population working very low income, replaceable jobs, or being completely replaced by automation.
Yeah. The social uplift only happens to people connected in some way to where the capital is accumulating. If you live where the capital is flowing from you're gonna have a bad time.
> I think unconstrained, uncontrolled capitalism will result in 90% of the global population working very low income, replaceable jobs, or being completely replaced by automation.
I think that's likely; after all, capitalism already replaced the jobs of 90% of the developed world population with automation and other efficiencies: that's why most of us no longer work in agriculture.
It was for the unemployed farmers help that is no longer needed and is now stuck with a house in a town where the prices have dropped way below the mortage on the house and 60 km to the closest store/gas station.
Mercantilism was also a pretty good economic system until it wasn't. It's not sound reasoning to say that capitalism had a net positive impact (at least in North America and Europe) through much of the 19th and 20th centuries and conclude that it is and will forever be the optimal system.
I think there's a compelling argument to be made that in this century, with forces like globalization and automation removing a lot of the leverage which labor had, modern capitalism is going to result in a net negative economic state for a vast majority of people.
Capitalism (free markets) is just a tool, not a silver bullet. Depending on the situation it might be the correct tool, or if may be the wrong tool. It is also fine to combine different tools. Some markets are best served by capitalism, others are better served by a monopoly, or a state organized market. Most of the world already concluded that healthcare (insurance) and a free market are not the best fit.
The problem isn't convenience stores (I lived in japan for 1.5 years and lemme tell you, they're wonderful and everyone loves them.) It's capitalisms completely unregulated growth in situations where no one could possibly benefit. They call it competition, but that's not what this is in practice.
There were way too many convenience stores that were open in the middle of the night, though (and apparently this is a requirement on the franchisees). There was a 24/7 convenience store on the first floor of my hotel, and then another one down the block, and then several more within a two block radius. There's no reason they couldn't all coordinate better so that each individual store is only open through the night a couple times per week. That would make a lot more sense. Most customers would still be able to reach an open convenience store, even in the middle of the night, within a few blocks walk. It'd be nice if stores had posted the hours of nearby stores so you'd know where else to go if the one you wanted was closed, but that's probably unnecessary now in the age of apps (I had no problem finding opening times for places on Google Maps).