Japanese Food Service Experience

Just a few weeks ago, we went on a trip to the land of the rising sun, Japan where we were met with a lot of challenges, mostly language-related, and some train-related. Just upon setting foot in the country, we were greeted by amazing sights. Countless massive and modern buildings with impressive architecture populated an endless urban sprawl, streets were litter-free, and we had to pause for a while to let everything sink in.

One of the highlights of our travel that is truly memorable for me is to see the way many of their restaurants are run. I observed a lot of practices that gave me fresh ideas in the way we operate such establishments here.

A lot of restaurants, big and small, have touch screen machines where you place your order and make your payment instead of having waiters. After having paid, you receive a printed stub indicating the items you selected. A busboy takes half of your printed stub, and soon delivers your freshly cooked meal. With this kind of set up there are major differences to what we normally expect here:

1. Accurate. With you having to encode the order yourself, the process is less prone to human error. What I did not like in this kind of method is you don’t really get the chance to modify the food or to ask questions. It’s a what-you-see-is-what-you-get scenario where you can choose only what is offered. But then again, if your diet can’t accommodate the food you want, you can just order a different one.

Because of this method, the people cooking won’t have to worry about batching and separating special orders. All they have to do is cook the menu they have already memorized over and over until the last order is filled. Come to think of it, this method is not only convenient for the cooks, but also for the people who will conduct inventory check at the end of the day because supplies are most likely consumed proportionate to the number of orders filled during the day.

2. Fast. With the system of placing an order, paying, and receiving change reduced to a simple touch of the screen, people can get to their seat and wait for their food fast. Although a small line sometimes forms in front of the vending machines, they finish fast. Once you get to your seat, it’s only a matter of a few minutes until you get your order served. With the Japanese people holding high value of everyone’s time, seldom will you see them stay in the restaurant after eating. They immediately leave so others can sit and eat. Because of this, even the small restaurants that can sit only twenty people can still accommodate a large volume of customers in a day.

3. Convenient. It can be probably to cut manpower, provide ease of access, or both, but in our experience, every table had disposable chopsticks, all kinds of condiments, cups, tissue and soup spoons. Literally, everything you need to dine is within arms-reach, no matter where you are seated. This reduces the need for you to call for assistance from the crew, or to stand up and find the utensil counter.

However, there are still a few Filipino foodservice characteristics that suit us more, and those are cheap food, and a more leisurely pace of dining. The price of one regular plate in Japan may be enough to buy a buffet here in our country. Food is definitely cheaper here, fine dining restaurants included. But then, of course, for the Japanese it is affordable as they have a much higher paycheck.

The tradition in Filipino restaurants is quite different, mostly because we value our time spent with each other while eating meals as much as or perhaps more than the food itself. In Japan, probably because of the premium attitude towards time, people eat and leave fast. But here, we eat, plan our next vacation, talk about who is with who, spill secrets, prepare business plans, just about everything, really. We see the dinner table as a place to bond with the people we are eating with.

There a lot of things we can learn from how food service establishments in Japan operate. While I marvel at their efficiency, you must be careful to adopt only those things that are not incompatible with our taste, culture and habits. This is not always an easy task for sometimes for tradeoffs must be made and the results may not be easy to predict. Still it is a challenge that must be overcome as we continuously strive to improve our business.

*Originally published by the Manila Bulletin. Manila Bulletin, C-4, Sunday, April 17, 2016. Written by Ruben Anlacan, Jr. (President, BusinessCoach, Inc.) All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or copied without express written permission of the copyright holders.