Since its creation, Kajirō Sushi has positioned itself as a quality Japanese snacking concept. The wish is to answer the desire to eat on the go or take away healthy, tasty products.
Because of the size of the first restaurant, we made the choice of disposable packaging for eat-in as for takeaway. While on site we're working on more economical and less environmentally impactful solutions, takeaway remains a big consumer of packaging. Yet solutions exist.
The deposit scheme to recycle packaging
Glass, plastic, cardboard, aluminium foil... A whole range of food packaging lets us preserve our food daily. How to transpose this into the world of takeaway catering and keep the ease and pleasure of sushi?
Reusable packaging is the only alternative. But asking people to come with an empty container is difficult. For the customer, because they have to wait a little longer to be served — the time to take their packaging, put their order in it before leaving. While so much effort is made to minimise the waiting time, this solution, although possible, seems to us a step backwards. And for us, it's a headache when a majority of orders come in over a fairly short time window.
Even if the idea is appealing, it would translate into a loss of service and ultimately into customer dissatisfaction. I'll add that not all packaging is equal. Packaging that's too small, requiring products to be piled up, would remove the first pleasure a meal at our place offers: the pleasure of the eyes.
Hence the idea of the deposit scheme. Offering suitable packaging and allowing people to come back with it but leave with another solves the problem. No waiting, no waste, a preserved pleasure. That's how our choice fell on "Mon Bento" products. For those who don't know, Mon Bento is a company from the Auvergne that offers creative products with a clean design, made in France and of impeccable quality. So it's a pleasure to associate our young brand with this successful company built on values close to ours. As you'll have understood, we love it and we'll offer them for sale!
But let's get back to our packaging problem. The deposit scheme, yes, but how? What price, what terms, what organisation. That's where we need you! Here's what we'd like to put in place in the first weeks of 2019. Please tell us by comment, on social media, by email and of course at the restaurants, what you think and what you'd like us to do.
The Mon Bento Square
The idea is to offer the Mon Bento Square on deposit. In addition to having all the advantages of Mon Bento (contains no BPA* or BPS, which are materials dangerous to health, certified by independent laboratories, etc.), it's the largest of the lunch boxes; it lets you include all our menus apart from the platters and extend the pleasure. But other products in the range will let us offer solutions for the sauces, the chopsticks and the Poke Bowl or Chirashi.
There's also the Twizz system from the Lyon company Neolid
What price for the deposit?
The deposit has a price. These products are magnificent, beautiful, well thought out, but they have a cost. The MB Square sells for €29, the sauce containers €5.90, the Twizz mug €19.90. As you'll have understood, you can quickly end up with a €90 meal when the dish is worth €15.
So here's what we propose. First, we're negotiating with Mon Bento and Neolid to get wholesale prices and reduce the cost, and we also take part of it on ourselves. In the end we'd offer the deposit as follows:
- The MB Square lunch box on deposit at €20
- The 2 sauce containers on deposit €5
- The retractable chopsticks on deposit €5
- Chirashi or soup bowl on deposit €15
The deposit items are given only with the dish (unlike the new packaged ones), and you can get the deposit refunded at any time in exchange for the products in good condition (that we can reuse, i.e. as the customer received them).
What do you think of the idea, the prices, the way it works? For now nothing is set, even if we're very keen to start. We await your suggestions 🙂
