The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake provided us an opportunity to reconsider the role of convenience stores as a social entity delivering daily necessities. In the past 10 years, each operator has built a system to quickly grasp disaster-related damage and provide necessary products. However, changes in the environment around convenience stores may have an impact on their disaster responses.
-- Helping the community
Yoshishige Matsuda, 72, who runs a Lawson, Inc. store in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, said items in his store were gone in no time immediately after the earthquake, but customers kept coming in to buy food and daily necessities anyway.
Although the parking lot was filled with earth from a landslide following the earthquake, Matsuda kept the store open to help the community. He lit up the store with car headlights when it became dark because of the power outage. Since the cash registers did not work, he used a calculator instead.
"I decided to keep the store open as long as my strength lasted as I had customers looking for food," said Matsuda, who stayed open even on the day of the earthquake. It took five days for the power to come back on. Products gradually began to arrive at the store a week later, but even after a month, the stock was still half of what it had been.
-- Increase in pharmaceuticals
One of the things Lawson focused on after the earthquake was in-store kitchens. Even if deliveries are temporarily interrupted, hot food can be served with in-store kitchens. Some Lawson stores equipped with cooking facilities are said to have been greatly appreciated after cooking onigiri rice balls and selling them on their own initiative following the disaster. Currently, about 6,400 Lawson stores, or half of all stores, are equipped with rice cookers and deep fryers.
Recently, Lawson has also increased the number of stores that sell non-prescription medicines. This is because convenience stores can often be the only places open immediately after a disaster. Jun Miyazaki, who is senior executive managing officer at Lawson, said: "We want to continue to be a reliable presence in times of disaster. That will lead us to gain support from customers during normal times."
Efforts are also underway to streamline the delivery of products to prevent stock selling out. Seven-Eleven Japan Co. has introduced Seven View, a system that allows the company to monitor stock status at its stores and the location of delivery trucks on a screen, leading to more accurate deliveries. The system is said to have been useful after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake and the earthquake off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture in February.
The system will be revamped this spring so that stores can swiftly send the details of any damage they have experienced to the headquarters via smartphone.
Focusing on the importance of drinking water in times of disaster, FamilyMart Co. built a mineral water plant in Niigata Prefecture after the 2011 disaster. There used to be only one such plant in Miyazaki Prefecture, but now the company is also able to supply water from eastern Japan to disperse risk.
-- Labor-saving measures
The convenience store environment has changed drastically over the past 10 years. Their around-the-clock operation used to provide a sense of security in times of a disaster, but labor shortages and changes in people's lifestyles have led to an increasing number of stores ceasing 24-hour operations.
Labor-saving measures such as unmanned stores and self-checkout machines have also advanced. The problem with these facilities is that they cannot operate if the power goes out in a disaster.
Yutaka Suzuki, a senior researcher at the Distribution Economics Institute of Japan, said: "Convenience stores and other retailers have also continued to operate and support society as the coronavirus spread. There is a limit to what we can expect companies to do in disasters. We need to consider public support, too."
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