 |
| 現在数多くのカフェが都会に見られるようになった。アメリカンスタイルのカフェが広がりを見せた理由には意外なものもある。それは…… |
* 2005/7/20 配信 ALC Newsletter No.16(ALC
International Marketing 発行)より
* クリックできる語句には、語注がついています
There are many cafes in Japan, especially in big cities. There was a period of time a few years ago that was called a "cafe boom," when cafes just opened one after another. One of the triggers for the cafe boom was probably the launch of the first Starbucks store in Japan in 1996. The all-non-smoking cafe was still unusual in Japan around that time, and many people, especially young women, enjoyed the aroma of coffee as well as the cafe's nice interior and atmosphere. Since then, the battle over coffee began among cafes--not only chain cafes from Seattle such as Tully's Coffee and Seattle's Best Coffee, but also local and independent cafes.
Tully's Coffee, one of the Seattle-based coffee chains, opened its first store in Japan in 1997. I was in Seattle from 2000-2001, during the time of the "coffee battle" in Japan, and had an opportunity to interview one of the executives of Tully's for a local Japanese newspaper. I asked him what would be the biggest challenge to them in expanding their business in Japan, and his answer was a little surprising--"canned coffee."
Yes, canned coffees
are very big in Japan. The number of the brands/labels of
canned coffees are almost uncountable,
and they cover
all kinds of coffee from regular, non-sugar, cafe
au lait, cafe mocha and so on! They are available everywhere
including convenience stores, grocery
stores or kiosks, but the seventy percent of them are
sold at vending
machines. Canned coffees are popular especially among
office workers---they drink them everyday before and during
work. And the biggest difference between canned coffee and
the coffee of cafes is probably the price---canned coffee
is about 120 yen (about 1.10 USD), whereas
the price of Tully's or Starbucks coffee is about 270 yen
(about 2.40 USD). The executive from Tully's must have been
right---it does seem quite a challenge to beat
canned coffee.
He also mentioned
that there would be another challenge for Tully's---the
cigarettes. Many of the cafes in Japan had long been filled
with smoke. For those who see cafes as a smoking heaven,
non-smoking cafes like Tully's or Starbucks should not be
somewhere they want to go. So Tully's actually decided to
make a "smoking area" in some of their Japanese locations
to compete against traditional Japanese cafes.
However, the global
non-smoking wave has finally reached the shores
of Japan recently, and now the traditional Japanese cafes
are starting to provide
"non-smoking areas"---just the opposite of the strategy
of Tully's. Although the "cafe boom" in Japan has settled,
the "coffee battle" between cafes, canned coffees and cigarettes
has not ended yet---we never know who will, or either one
will, ever win the battle.
|
