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The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

straitstimes.com

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Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#141

Post by bombcar »

codersfocus wrote: post #92
epcoa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Costco doesn’t sell caseloads of Cocacola shipped all the way from Mexico to the north east because it’s “hipster bullshit.” I’m in Europe right now and Coke tastes way better, and doesn’t leave a mild bad feeling after drinking it like it does in the US. There is a significant chemical difference between sugar and HFCS. For one, the molecules in sugar are disaccharides while in HFCS they are free. High Fructose CS a…

Costco selling caseloads is a pretty strong argument that it might be hipster bullshit given Costco’s market demographics.

IIRC there have been a few studies on the Coca Cola and the biggest thing is being told it’s Mexican coke and having it be in a cold glass bottle - real sugar coke in a can or glass ranked lower than HFCS coke in a glass bottle and misidentified.

Of course the cognoscenti know that the real deal is Coke in returnable bottles that are probably older than you are. No retornable is export shit.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#142

Post by bombcar »

ziddoap wrote: post #19
dclowd9901 wrote: post #2

I know this is an unimportant thing, but why tf doesn’t kit kat just sell desirable flavors here themselves? What is the deal with the boner these companies have about withholding certain flavors in certain markets?

I don't think it's a boner over withholding flavors. It's likely a profit boner. Margins on obscure flavors aren't projected to be high enough in whatever market, so they don't offer it. But in some other market, projections look good, so they offer it.

And something can be profitable for importers and not worth it for the company, additional tracking, stocking, etc.

Much simpler to have a few flavors shipped to millions of stores daily.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#143

Post by jprete »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #112
jrockway wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "uber for freight" A few years ago I needed an M1 machine to finalize arm64 support for the product I was working on. I asked our office manager if I could expense one, and the answer was "yes". So I went to the Apple store and ordered one with same-day delivery. It turns out that Apple's same day delivery provider is ... Uber Eats. After the order was picked up from Apple, you could see the Uber Eats tracking page…

Ouch! My thought was that the app based model with some sort of vetting of drivers was better than a jobs board with people's names on it. Perhaps not a lot better but possibly better.

The job board has better vetting, because only actual truckers even know it exists. In the OP, at least “Tristan” was actually a trucker with a truck.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#144

Post by numpad0 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #111
dharmab wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese retail space (as in, the physical space available in the stores) favors small batches. US retail space favors economies of scale.

Do you know why this is? This seems to be true across a variety of products, including way more interesting fast food offerings.

It does seem like Japanese brands are more optimized for smaller size and number of batches. Could be due to accommodating logistics, media hype culture, denser population, omnipresent convenience stores, etc.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#145

Post by jprete »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #55
tristor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm missing something, this already exists. This is basically what the entire LTL freight market is based around. Am I missing something?

I was struck by these two paragraphs in the article: Mr Black, who runs a freight brokering company called Freight Rate Central in Sarasota, Florida, is part of an invisible army of professionals who coordinate and marshal the fleets of trucks that criss-cross the country, carrying everything from chickens to smartphones. For this job, Bokksu would pay him about US$13,000. Mr Black got to it. He posted the job on a t…

A commenter on the thread mentioned that Apple once tried to one-day-ship them a laptop via Uber Eats and the driver vanished with the laptop. Apps don’t magically make things better.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#146

Post by snypher »

pphysch wrote: post #82
mike_d wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a study from CargoNet the total theft of cargo containers in 2022 was 1,778 units for a total of about $220m. By comparison about 10,000 cargo containers fall off of ships every year. The problem is well below the threshold where anyone would pay a dollar more per container to deal with it.

> By comparison about 10,000 cargo containers fall off of ships every year. Is that big number due to catastrophic failures of entire vessels sinking, or is it more like "whoopsy these goods fell off the truck *wink*" sorta fraud?

~200 million containers are shipped a year, and some do actually fall overboard from the ship.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#147

Post by jodrellblank »

closewith wrote: post #30
mparkms wrote: post #10

So this guy whose job it is to hire truckers to move goods fell for the same scam twice in a row? Fool me once, etc, etc...

There are lots of high-trust interfaces like this in the legacy businesses that make up most of world commerce. It might not be feasible to do much more in the way of background checks.

He took $13,000 to post an ad on “Craigslist for truckers”.

Why couldn’t Bokksu skip him and do that directly?

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#148

Post by HlessClaudesman »

My luggage got "misplaced" in Amsterdam airport, returned 3 days later minus my japanese kit-kats. I complained to both my airline and the airport but was given the runaround, some bullcrap about removing organic matter, strangely they left the bag of raw onions.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#149

Post by ThrowAwayChris »

mike_d wrote: post #48
lbotos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KitKat in the USA is run by Hershey. KitKat globally is run by Nestle. That's one reason why. The second is that in Japan Kit Kat sounds like "good luck" which is why they became popular, and two, why we see such regional variation. (I have 4 Japanese flavors in my NYC fridge right now -- Sweet Potato, Adult Sweetness, Wheat, and Caramel Pudding (which you bake!)

> Adult Sweetness I'm sorry, what?

It's a reduced sugar bitter dark chocolate kitkat that they know kids won't like. Hence "Otona No Amasa" or "sweetness for adults" marketing. They have a bunch of flavors under that subbrand.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#150

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

qingcharles wrote: post #108
gantron wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an interesting story! How big was a pallet? How does one come to know the specific truck driver?

This was back in 1997, so my memory is a little hazy, but I remember it being about 6ft x 6ft x 6ft. It was a bunch of cardboard shipping boxes with clear wrap around them. I think I was paying £10,000 per pallet. He told me he would just skip scanning a pallet at the docks as they were loaded into his trailer, and then his mate would meet him at a roadside services on the motorway with a van and they would somehow m…

I once stole cookies in supermarket...Still not sure why I did it.
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