I wonder if you could partially get around this by using the "ghost kitchen" model. Offer food only for delivery, but then "hire" customers to deliver their own meals if they want it cheap.
America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
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Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#12This is missing the forest for the trees a bit. Our zoning laws do prevent lower footprint businesses, but in reality the problem is less zoning laws and more landlords and rent. If you compare city to city (ignoring other societal issues), cities in Japan have a far lower vacancy rate compared to cities across America.
In Seattle I've seen a ton of smaller spaces become vacant and stay vacant for years because landlords aren't interested in lowering rent prices; they're holding onto the building/land itself because it'll appreciate over time and there's little to no cost to them to hold onto empty space. Roosevelt Square here is a great example of what I'm referring to, because you've got prime restaurant and retail space located right next to public transit that's increasingly going empty.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#13No one sells $4 lunch bowls in the US because no one wants to work for minimum wage for 12 hours a day. The article makes it seem like a great idea, but people in Japan who run these stores work like dogs and live in poverty for their whole lives.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#14Pay Japanese salaries, get Japanese prices [0]. That $4 kombini bento feels like a $13 burrito or Cava bowl when on a Japanese salary. Japan only appears cheap if you earn in USD, GBP, and Euros. For most Japanese households, costs have risen higher than salaries [1][2] and they are now facing inflation due to tourist spending [7][8][9]. It also doesn't help that the median household income in Japan is around $25,000…
> Japan’s minimum wage ($6.68 an hour) is similar to America’s ($7.25).
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#15I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned:
In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should cap housing construction, 10% of the population voted. 5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state. Among those voters, most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses.
Most people do not realize how zoning impacts the daily life of everyone in an area, and how it impacts personal finances, which businesses will thrive, and public finances. Where I live, we have an absurd number of chains, and local businesses struggle. Part of this is out of our control, but the part that is (minimum parking requirements, single use zoning, etc) continuously gets upheld against changes that would help local businesses.
I think we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally. Many young people will protest national or state policies and be engaged at those levels, which is great, but very little time/energy is spent where they could directly see meaningful impact on their lives.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#16I've been to the US a couple of times and most restaurants I visited did not have any parking spots at all. I have also seen plenty of food-carts operated by a single person, comparable to the Japanese mini-restaurants described here.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#17It probably isn't as simple as the writer thinks. Houston, for example, has no zoning laws and no $4 lunch bowls.
Houston has similar regulations that effectively serve the same purpose to determine land use, which is zoning adjacent.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#18>Individual regulations, each reasonable in isolation... Every single one of these rules that amounts to death by a thousand cuts preventing these sorts of businesses (as well as many others) will be rabidly defended by many/most if presented in the abstract. That sort of inability to reason about the forest based on what you're doing to the trees is the root problem. And it's a social/ideological/moral one, even if…
This is why the "let's slash regulations and cut the size of the government to let business prosper" pitch seems so appealing, and yet never seems to work in practice. The problem is, these kinds of deregulatory pushes always imagine that there are a bunch of price-increasing regulations set up by unaccountable bureaucrats somewhere, and that we can tear those down while making the system simultaneously cheaper and more democratic. A win-win! Supposedly.
The problem is, that's not really how it works. There are a bunch of regulations made by bureaucrats, but those tend to be the pretty arcane ones which are necessary but aren't adding a lot of cost (think "what color do the flashing lights on radio towers have to be so planes don't crash into them"). And simultaneously, there are a bunch of regulations which are actually driving costs up, but those are the ones either broadly supported by the public, or supported by one particular interest group who will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it because their livelihood or home equity depends on the rent extraction.
To actually cut costs with deregulation, you need to fight ugly political battles often against sympathetic groups (homeowners, doctors, teachers, construction workers etc.), which no politician wants to do, so they instead try to pretend that "bureaucrats" (who could be less sympathetic than bureaucrats?) are to blame.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#19This is missing the forest for the trees a bit. Our zoning laws do prevent lower footprint businesses, but in reality the problem is less zoning laws and more landlords and rent. If you compare city to city (ignoring other societal issues), cities in Japan have a far lower vacancy rate compared to cities across America. In Seattle I've seen a ton of smaller spaces become vacant and stay vacant for years because landl…
That's not how commercial real estate works.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#20I wonder if you could partially get around this by using the "ghost kitchen" model. Offer food only for delivery, but then "hire" customers to deliver their own meals if they want it cheap.
This is an interesting point...many of the ghost kitchens technically allow pickup.