On April 23, 2021, Mr. Hisashi Nagahiro – General Director of Gobal HR Strategy Division – Yoshinoya Holdings., LDT had a special lecture undergraduates titled “Foodservice Industry Theory (Type of Business and Industry, Industries, and Innovation).
The outline of the lecture was as follows:
1. The Reason for Eating
2. The History of Foodservice industry
3. Classification of Foodservice (Type of store and Kind of business)
4. Foodservice Industry Issues
5. Foodservice Cold Chain Logistics
After his brief introduction, this special lecture started with a curious question, “Why do we eat? He explained its reason from the viewpoints of physiological, mental, and social significance. Then he asked, “What are the three largest grains in the world? “What is the most consumed meat in the world? It was an opportunity for us to rethink the food we usually take for granted.
The special lecture then moved on to the history of the foodservice industry. First, we learned about the beginnings of fast food in Japan through pictures from the Edo period. Then, we learned when and how Yoshinoya and gyudon, the typical Japanese fast food, were born, and the history of Yoshinoya’s growth. Japan’s foodservice industry has expanded along with the country’s economic growth. However, since around the 1990s, the growth speed of the foodservice industry has slowed down. Instead, the market for delivery and take-out has been expanding.
Today, many Japanese restaurants are looking to enter the Vietnamese market. In this lecture, he explained the reasons for this with a lot of data.
In his lecture, he explained the classification of the foodservice industry in which we used various criteria such as industry and type of business as well as meal category (eat out, home meal replacement, and home cooking) and price range to classify the way we eat. He also spoke about the rapid growth of the delivery market and changes in the market environment as a major feature of recent years.
The next topic seems to be the challenges of the foodservice industry, especially low wages and low satisfaction of employees. The president of Yoshinoya seems to be working on a solution to this problem. He told us that the CEO of Yoshinoya is working to reduce the burden on employees and improve labor productivity by making good use of robots, biomimetics, and other knowledge. He also introduced other issues, such as microplastics and food loss, and companie’s efforts to address these issues.
The last topic was cold chain logistics at Yoshinoya. In order to deliver a delicious meal, the ingredients need to be delivered cold from the farm to the restaurant. Using many pictures, he explained in detail the flow from farm to purchase, processing, and delivery to the restaurants.
Finally, he concluded this lecture with Yoshinoya’s vision and the role of people in the future.
This three-hour lecture gave the students of Vietnam Japan University a valuable opportunity to gain a wide range of knowledge about the foodservice industry and to think deeply about the food that we usually eat without thinking.
