Earthquake foodstuff - Hey Lawson marketer, think about this!

These last days there have been difficulties getting some basic foodstuff, bread in particular, but due to people hoarding up and supply difficulties for the companies, some shelves have been quite empty.

During the night of the quake last Friday, trying to get any food in any convenience store was basically an impossible mission as basically everything edible apart from candy and snacks had been completely sold out. As I was wandering around in the Tokyo night together with my fellow traveller in the finance guy, we at one point went into a Lawson to use the bathroom.

This is a picture of one of the shelves, normally stocked with salads and other "fresh" foods. At 9 PM Friday night though it looked like this. What I do find very interesting though is that apart from the salad dressing on the top, one poor little salad didn't seem to be able to find any customer, and it was also a new great product from the Lawson food R&D and Marketing. Now, I don't know about you, but if you come into a convenience store where basically everything edible is sold out and people scavenge for food wherever they can, but still one little salad (and a new innovative product as well!) is not touched; I think it's fair to say that it's a big failure.

The guy/gal leading the development of this product probably should be back to stocking the shelves. And no, we didn't buy it either.