As the popularity of ready-to-cook cut vegetables is rising in Japan, the variety of such products is also growing. A broad selection of precut products is on display in the vegetable section of the Aeon Style Makuhari Shintoshin store in Chiba, including vegetables for ramen, yakisoba, curry, stew and yakiniku grilled meat.
The vegetables in the bags are cut into different shapes to suit the intended dish.
“We have increased the variety of products after hearing from consumers,” said Hideo Muroi, who is in charge of development at Aeon Retail Co. The company offers more than 40 kinds of cut vegetables for cooking.
On average, about 15 types are on sale at each store, with the variety depending on the store.
The company’s sales of cut vegetables started increasing in around 2010, when unsettled weather led to a rise in vegetable prices and consumers were attracted to cut vegetables because their prices were more stable. Before that, cut vegetables were popular mainly among young or single people.
But as elderly consumers and families began to buy cut vegetables, sales doubled in the four years from 2011 to 2015.
Health consciousness has also played a role in the growing popularity of cut vegetables.
Salad Club Inc., a company producing and selling cut vegetables for use in salads, conducted a nationwide survey last year covering about 2,000 people aged 20 to 69. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they did not buy enough vegetables, citing such reasons as “high prices” (41 percent), “difficulty in consuming purchased vegetables” (27 percent), and “too bulky to store” (20 percent).
Tanaka Ryuji, the senior managing director of Salad Club, said: “Many consumers want vegetables but tend to refrain from buying them, feeling it is difficult to eat them all and that it’s wasteful to throw them away. This is why demand for cut vegetables is growing. Consumers can buy only as much as they need.”
According to Salad Club’s survey, some consumers have reservations about eating cut vegetables. Some cited fears that they may be “unsanitary” or the fact that they do not know where the vegetables are produced.
The company sought to alleviate such fears by disclosing the process of production and other specifics on its homepage and started to attach QR barcodes to bags of its main products.
