Something different about a bento I bought at the FamilyMart on Palaceside Building 1F?!
Not that dramatic—but the wrap on my usual "two onigiri set" is simpler. Instead of covering the whole box in film, only the lid seam is sealed. Basically all bento types are switching.
Started September 16 at about 200 stores in Shizuoka and Kanagawa, rolling out to roughly 10,000 nationwide by end of February. At the Takebashi store I noticed the change this month.
It saves resources and, scaled nationwide, cuts costs by hundreds of millions of yen annually.
The resin film is heat-sealed to fit the container contours—see photo left. Slits in the film let you twist open easily.
Container colors were also partly revised; multiple suppliers were consolidated into the Itochu group, which is providing about 1.2 billion yen in packaging equipment free to contracted factories—a win-win, apparently.
Less waste is welcome. Online comments praise the inventors. Hearing only the result sounds trivial, but someone had to conceive it, persuade stakeholders, and schedule rollout—classic Japanese kaizen at work.