Japan’s fussy food shoppers finally go online amid pandemic

TOKYO — The coronavirus has forced Japan’s notoriously fussy food shoppers to abandon doubts about online grocery stores, sending retailers such as Aeon Co. scrambling to meet a surge in delivery demand.

Although Japanese shoppers aren’t alone in going online during the outbreak, the shift is remarkable for a country that had been expected to take years to embrace online food shopping because of a zeal for fresh and perfectly presented produce.

“I think that this pandemic has triggered an inflection point in the adoption of grocery ecommerce,” said Luke Jensen, executive director of Ocado Group, hired to build a grocery e-commerce business for Japanese retail giant Aeon.

Most companies won’t disclose numbers, but retail executives and analysts estimate internet sales now account for about 5% or more of Japan’s total grocery sales, compared with 2.5% before the pandemic.

Although that is still lower than some pre-crisis estimates of 15% in China and even 7% in broadband laggard Britain, it challenges a long-held belief that Japanese shoppers will always be shopping daily and in person, checking the goods first-hand.

Yuri Ohtaka, a graphic designer living in Tokyo’s western suburbs, began ordering from multiple online supermarkets in March after seeing shoppers emptying shelves at a nearby store. —