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The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#161

Post by seaborn63 »

protonfish wrote: post #157
brazzy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Profit = income - expense. The other way to maximize profit is reduce wasteful operating expenses.

Something I've often thought gets overlooked

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#162

Post by hudibras »

ekianjo wrote: post #34
bane wrote: post #3

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 t…

> 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 mor…

> Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.

Agree 100%. I never believe anything that a business owner says in the news.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#164

Post by hudibras »

jorblumesea wrote: post #46
patio11 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 corpora…

>It sounds like 7-11 corporate for JP is uncompromising to a fault and unwilling to meet owners halfway.

The "meeting owners halfway" part is called a contract. Presumably, staying open 24 hours is part of that contract.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#165

Post by hudibras »

yskchu wrote: post #28
vkou wrote: post #2

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 cours…

> Smart management would close the store during those hours. It's mentioned in the article actually, in the later section on Mitoshi Matsumoto; he closed early and made more $$$.

So he said.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#166

Post by TulliusCicero »

pyrale wrote: post #78
wiggler00m wrote: post #69

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…

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.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#167

Post by TulliusCicero »

aidenn0 wrote: post #49
jorblumesea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corpora…

Talk to any McD's franchisee about all-day breakfast if you want a comparably "unpopular with franchisees" brand requirement.

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.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#168

Post by TulliusCicero »

dang wrote: post #79
delhanty wrote: post #30

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 portio…

> 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 fa…

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.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#169

Post by WarDores »

AmVess wrote: post #95
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

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.

Every CFA owner/operator (you technically don't franchise) I know (n=3) says those are basically money-printing machines.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#170

Post by mbreese »

brazzy wrote: post #154
CydeWeys wrote: post #16

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 stor…

> 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.

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.
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