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Convenience Stores Try to Slash Disposal of Bento Lunch Boxes

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

Jul. 26--TOKYO -- Convenience stores are trying to sharply cut down on the disposal of unsold bento lunch boxes.

Lunch boxes are bread-and-butter goods for many stores, which have made rapid progress capitalizing on the convenience of displaying the kinds of bento customers want at any time of the day.

However, they are responding to claims that it is a waste to throw away bento after a shelf life of several hours.

Seven-Eleven Japan Co., the biggest operator of convenience stores in the country, started late last month checking on the degree of freshness of foodstuffs, including bento and "onigiri" rice balls, from three to nine times a day.

It made it possible to uniformly remove lunch boxes from the shelves of Seven-Eleven stores two hours before the end of their consumption period by managing their freshness every two to three hours a day.

Many convenience stores set a time limit of several hours for displaying a variety of lunch boxes before the two-hour consumption period starts.

By doing so, they take into account the time needed for some customers to take them away to eat at home, in the office or other places.

Seven-Eleven previously inspected the freshness of bento simultaneously with the delivery of goods three times a day. But since it stocked a variety of goods with use-by dates, it recovered even those lunch boxes that still had time left for consumption together with those which were older in order of production.

Hiroshi Saito, manager of a Seven-Eleven store in front of Kojimachi subway station in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, said, "It takes time and effort (to check bento nine times a day) but it leads to an increase in sales and a reduction in disposal (of lunch boxes.)" He also said his store has achieved a 10 percent cutback in the amount of bento it did not retain.

Analysts said rival companies are paying attention to Seven-Eleven and may follow suit if its giving up its three-times-a-day inspection system proves successful.

An increase in the number of checks could lead to a rise in costs.

am/pm Japan Co., meanwhile, is taking a different approach to slash the disposal of bento, offering customers what it calls "fresh kitchen"-frozen bento prepared by microwave oven.

Its stores warm frozen lunch boxes after receiving orders from customers so that there will be no waste of bento.

They also cite the healthy aspects of their food, which does not contain any preservatives.

am/pm is striving to improve the accuracy of orders for bento.

It anticipates what types of lunch boxes sell well by collecting information on things such as events to be held in the neighborhood, the weather and temperature. It uses its database to avoid stocking unnecessary goods.

Some companies operating convenience stores have signed contracts with fertilizer manufacturing firms to use rice in unsold bento and cooked food in side dishes for the manufacture of a substance to be put on the soil to help plants grow.

Circle K Sunkus Co. collects unsold bento, side dishes and bread from its stores in the central Japan city of Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, to make compost. With the cooperation of local agricultural cooperatives, some farmers used compost to grow onions.

They harvested about 1.6 tons of onions in June and Circle K Sunkus said it used them as cooking material for 30,000 lunch boxes sold in its stores in Nagoya.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Kyodo News International, Tokyo

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Source: Kyodo News International, Tokyo

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