Nihonbashi (bridge)bentobox lunch (containing rice and 10-15 small portions of fish, meat, and vegetables)
Nihonbashi Benmatsu Sohonten” traces its origins back to 1810, when a restaurant called “Higuchiya” was opened on the fish market in Nihonbashi. Over the next 213 years, Higuchiya became a bento shop named Nihonbashi Bensho Sohonten, delighting the palates of many customers. We interview Mr. Junichi Higuchi, the eighth generation in charge of this oldest bento shop in Japan.
～first partArticle by ~.
Forest:From the first generation to your generation, there have been many innovations and innovations. May I ask what exactly happened?
Junichi Higuchi:Kaei 3, 1850, is the year that this bento shop called Bensho was founded. Actually, our predecessor was a restaurant located on the fish market. The year is 1810, the 7th year of Bunka era, so it was founded a little earlier. The first, second, and third generations were all in the restaurant business. They served a variety of set menus and other dishes, but the portions were very large, and it was said to be very cost-effective. However, the fact that it was located in a fish market meant that the customers were mainly from the fish market. In those days, fish markets did not yet have refrigerators or freezers, and fish purchased in the morning had to be sold by noon or they would be damaged. So when we ate, we would rush home after shoveling down our meals.
But ours was a lot of food, so we didn’t have time to eat it all. So customersthreeThe first generation of our family saw this and thought it was a waste. The first generation of our company saw this and thought it was a waste, so he started a service in which the leftover side dishes were wrapped in bamboo bark or thinly sliced wood called sutra wood and taken home. The service was apparently well received by customers. Eventually, customers came up with the idea of having all the dishes made to-go from the beginning, so the restaurant began to offer both take-out and eat-in services.
As time went by, the demand for take-out, or catered lunches, became overwhelmingly greater during the third generation. So I decided to quit the diner business and focus solely on the catered bento shop, and that is when I changed the business format. When we were a diner, we took the last name Higuchiya, but when the third generation took over, the name Higuchi Matsujiro was used, and even though we were still a diner, customers in the area seemed to recognize us as a bento shop and nicknamed us “Matsujiro the Bento Chef. So when we decided to completely change the business format to a bento shop, we shortened “Matsujiro the Bento Shop” and changed the name to “Bensho. That is when the business changed. I don’t know if you can call it an innovation, but from that point on, we have remained focused on bento.
I see, so that’s how the name of the restaurant came about.
Mr. Higuchi:I am sure that many things happened in each generation, but after the war, the previous generation opened our first store in a department store. We opened our first store in a nearby department store called Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, and from there, during my predecessor’s time, we opened stores in various other department stores, and sales quickly increased and the company grew. I think this was one of the innovations we made. The economy was booming, so we were expanding rapidly, which I think was appropriate for the time. However, after the bursting of the bubble economy and other factors, the economy began to decline rapidly, and since my generation took over, we have been downsizing a bit. I think it is best to keep the size of the company in line with the size of the company.
Compared to a decade ago, nowadays we have to worry about reforms in the way we work and various other aspects of the working environment, and in the first place, workers are hard to come by. In the food industry, there are various laws such as HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), and compared to the past, there are more rules that must be followed in addition to the same work. It is very difficult to do the work while properly complying with these rules.
Hayashi: It’s not just an innovation, but something that has to be done in response to the situation.
Higuchi：Yes, that’s right. And although it is not so much an innovation, we still maintain the traditional cooking methods, and we use freezing in some cases. We prepare the food in batches and then freeze it. Decades ago, frozen food had an image of poor quality, but nowadays, for example, even famous ryotei (Japanese-style restaurants) and hotels are making “frozen Osechi (New Year’s Day) dishes. In fact, in many cases, quality is better preserved by freezing. In this way, we are trying to reduce working hours and reduce the number of workers while introducing various new cooking methods.
Hayashi: Yes, that’s right. I think that is the most important part of the changes that are taking place, and you are also actively disseminating information these days.
The social networking site he started with Corona became a buzzword.
The trigger was the new coronavirus infection, which had already started affecting us around February 2020. We didn’t declare a state of emergency, but it was getting to the point where it was like a mysterious infectious disease was going around, and every year in February and March, we get pretty big orders for graduation ceremonies, etc., but those orders were cancelled all over the place. The clouds were threatening, so I thought it would be better to make some connections with customers. At the time, our company was not doing any social networking, but I thought I could do something after all this time, among other things.TwitterI was lucky, but my number of followers grew steadily, and now it has become a tool that allows me to transmit information in a very effective way.
I have come to realize something through doing this. I would like to tell this to other long-established stores as well: “Customers don’t recognize your store at all. It is better to take that stance. If you take the stance that “everyone knows about us,” it is not true. Even if they know your name, they don’t know what you sell in which department store. If you look at the website, you can find the information, but many people don’t go that far to get the information on their own. So, we may think that once we announce that our products are sold at Mitsukoshi, everyone knows about them, but we have learned that we need to be persistent in notifying our customers every day.
Hayashi: That’s amazing. You have 25,000 followers now. I think it is one of the most successful accounts for a long-established company.
Basically, I try to send out information every day. I also think that customers are more interested in seeing the face of the worker or the creator of the product, as well as information about new products. I don’t show their faces very much, but I can tell them how the food is prepared. Also, our sales staff always show their faces, so I ask them to greet the customers by showing their faces.
One thing that is often played is bribery. You may be surprised at how many people are interested in what people eat at restaurants and food factories as bribes. The person in charge takes a video every morning and shows it to the public. Recently, he is so enthusiastic about it that he says, “I think I put more effort into bribery than into my main job. I’ve heard that some customers ask for recipes, but even if you just try to make a recipe, it’s not easy because it serves 15 or 20 people. It’s not about how many teaspoons, but how many cc’s.
Hayashi: So you are adding a lot of seasonings in a gusher.
Higuchi: It is difficult to make a recipe because the seasoning seems to be appropriate, or rather, it seems to be made without measuring exactly anymore.
Hayashi: Everyone who is good at it is making it with a good eye for detail. It might be difficult to reproduce it, even if you say, “That was delicious yesterday.”
Higuchi：As for the bribes, we have a rule that basically you are not allowed to say, “It’s not good. It is also a way for us to practice using ingredients that we do not normally use. So the ingredients and seasonings can be made according to the preferences of the person in charge. You are not allowed to say, “It was not good. If you want to say something, you should cook it the next day.
Higuchi: I found out through Twitter that surprisingly there are many people who want to eat our bentos all over Japan. However, there are many people who find it difficult to go to Tokyo now because of Corona, so we are trying to deliver our bento nationwide as much as possible for those people. We would like to do our best to develop mail-order sales and sales in a form that can be preserved.
Hayashi: Technology is also changing. Finally, please give a few words to everyone who is watching.
If you have never had one of our bento boxes, please try our “sweet and spicy thick flavor”. The flavor we call it may come as a bit of a surprise to newcomers. However, we hope you will give it a try as an experience of Edo culture and that this is the taste of bento that has continued since the Edo period.
Nihonbashi Benmatsu Sohonten” took the opportunity of Corona to start a social networking service, and now has 25,000 followers. Despite being a long-established restaurant, the company still focuses on advertising activities with the humble attitude that “customers are not aware of my restaurant at all. The taste of a long-established restaurant and the tools of the modern age. Fighting with these two weapons, “Nihonbashi Benshitsu Sohonten” may be said to be a brand that stands at the forefront of bento shops.
*If you would like to see this dialogue on video.here (place close to the speaker or where the speaker is)
