Customers line up to buy Baumkuchen in the basement of a department store. (Mainichi Shimbun) GOURMET WONDERLANDS: Japan's Department Store Basements November 14, 2001 The basement levels of department stores in Japan are buzzing with life, with cheerful sales clerks offering an array of prepared foods behind sleek glass counters. Despite tough economic times for department stores as a whole, the basement floors remain oases of epicurean indulgence, where customers can find affordably priced foods bearing prestigious labels and purchase small quantities of dishes that are difficult to prepare at home. The convenience greatly appeals to shoppers, particularly women, who often form long lines in front of the sales counters. TV shows and magazines routinely publicize information about department stores' culinary offerings, and the media have helped fuel a boom for department-store food shopping. Delectable Desserts In front of a shop in the heart of Tokyo's lively Shibuya shopping district, people are standing in line. The shop is Gâteaux de Voyage, operated inside the Tokyu Toyoko department store. Tokyu completed a large-scale renovation of the basement level of its flagship Shibuya store in April 2000. The line in front of Gâteaux de Voyage forms at 10:00 a.m., the store's opening time, and does not let up all day. What are these customers after? Fresh-baked cream puffs! The individual-size pies--baked in the store's oven and filled with a vanilla-bean custard--sell for 200 yen (1.67 U.S. dollars at 120 yen to the dollar) apiece. Every hour on the hour, people form a long line waiting for the pies to come out of the oven. Because of the pies' popularity, the quantity is limited to six per customer. After footage of people waiting in the endless queue was broadcast on TV, even more people showed up the next day and formed an even longer line--illustrating the notion that popularity begets popularity. In line with a general trend toward so-called home meal replacement, another popular department-store offering is ready-made meals, which more and more busy consumers are taking home these days in an effort to save time on cooking. Two leading vendors of Western-style precooked dishes are RF1 and Kakiyasu Dining. Both of these shops are tenants on the basement level of the Daimaru department store located at Tokyo Station. The department store remodeled its basement level in the spring of 2001, and sales of Western-style side dishes at the store have seen 40% year-on-year increases every month since May. Both RF1 and Kakiyasu Dining are known for using seasonal vegetables and for coming out with a constant stream of new dishes. For example, one of the special autumn concoctions at RF1 is mushroom salad, which contains a variety of vegetables, including cucumbers, celery, and six kinds of mushrooms. This healthy salad is topped with a soy-sauce-based dressing. Meanwhile, one of the fall dishes at Kakiyasu Dining is a salad of chestnuts, pumpkin, and sun-dried tomatoes. This salad offers not only a pleasant mix of sweet and acidic flavors but also a healthy nutritional balance. Though some of the offerings at RF1 and Kakiyasu Dining are by no means cheap, the shops' products are particularly popular among housewives looking to save themselves the trouble of preparing balanced, varied dishes at home and young single women who want to get plenty of vegetables in their diets. Innovative Approaches Both department stores and the tenant shops they house are trying new approaches to selling prepared foods. In the past the side dishes, cakes, and cookies sold at department stores have been produced at factories and delivered to the stores before opening time. But now, some stores are trying to boost sales by letting their customers watch the food-preparation process. One, a confectionery at Mitsukoshi's Ginza department store, has a glass-fronted kitchen. The sight of cakes being decorated with fresh cream frosting and tartlets being heaped with colorful fruits elicits exclamations of surprise and delight from the customers waiting in line.   Your Name What did you think of this article? It was interesting. It was boring. Send this article to a friend "Eat-in" corners for customers who want to consume their purchases on the spot are also popular. A tempura shop called Tsunahachi, which is a tenant at the Shinjuku branch of Takashimaya, operates both a restaurant on the thirteenth floor and a shop on the first basement level. Tsunahachi sells tendon (a bowl of rice topped with tempura) at its shop for half the price it charges at its restaurant, though the portions are the same size. According to a spokesperson, Tsunahachi is doing this not so much to bring in more revenue as to enhance the shop's image. Department stores are also improving their own food-sales facilities. For example, Mitsukoshi, which once sold wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionery) only by the box, has set up a counter where they are sold individually. Here, customers who want to sample a variety of wagashi can choose from among about 400 kinds of traditional sweets from all over Japan. Basements Fuel Department-Store Recovery In the first half of fiscal 1998, department stores in Tokyo saw their year-on-year sales drop by about 6.7%. But in 2001, they have made a turnaround with an increase of 0.7%. The driving force behind this increase has been growth in sales from the basement-level food sections, which account for about 20% of the stores' total sales. The basement food boom, moreover, is not confined to Tokyo but is affecting all regions from Hokkaido to Osaka to Kyushu. One expert describes the phenomenon as follows: "By expanding their selections and improving quality, department-store basement-level food sections have become customer magnets. The food sections also act as a 'fountain,' which pushes customers from the basement to the upper floors of the store. This is the opposite of the 'shower' pattern of the past, in which customers trickled down to the basement from the upper floors." Copyright (c) 2001 Japan Information Network. Edited by Japan Echo Inc. based on domestic Japanese news sources. Articles presented here are offered for reference purposes and do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the Japanese Government.