Date of Issue: March 2021 Issue　　Category: Knowledge

Coronavirus Pandemic Bring About Many Changes for the Better that Open Up Possibilities in the Future

Hello, everyone, I'm James Odaira of Boulansserie Journal. And I would like to talk about the chagenes that occured in recent days in the online shopping of bread items in Japan.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the business environments in many ways, and this is also true in the Japanese baking industry. And I think one of the biggest changes is that more and more emphases are placed on online shopping, in which many chef owners were not willing to engage before the pandemic.

One reason is because many of them had to make up for the reduced bread sales, and another reason, which is perhaps more important, is because the freezing technology of freshly baked bread has been advancing drastically.

The chef owner of a famous bakery who operates bakeries in the business area of Osaka City was suffering from a serious decrease in sales as the Japanese Government announced a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic. He had to close 3 shops for about a month and decided to start selling breads on the internet.

Incidentally, he had bought a freezer, because he was planning to start selling the breads left unsold each day on the internet. He is very concerned about the food loss issue. He said, "The high food waste rate in Japan is problematic, and we have been working to reduce it. And we started the project to sell the package of unsold bread items named "Let's Stop Wasting Breads Package" at a bargain price.

For this purpose, I purchased a special freezer for baked bread freezing and dough freezing. It prevents water separation so that the bread does not deteriorate, and the flavor and texture of the bread can be maintained at the same quality as it was when the bread was purchased in the shop. And that is why I decided to sell online."

In Japan, many people buy breads and put them in the freezing room in the refrigerator. And the frozen breads are taken out and put into the microwave oven. This is one of the most popular ways of enjoying breads in Japan. Japanese bread lovers are the people who know how to freeze breads better than any people in any other countries.

Under these circumstances, profesional bakers had to do something and that something is what they started in the coronavirus pandemic.They began to make researches on the ways to freeze their products. Bakery machine manufactures began to spend more time on the development of new bread freezing technologies.

These efforts on the supplyers' side put a tremendous amout of fuel into the popularization of online shopping of bread items in Japan. Bresd consummers are now able to get breads from so many famous bakery shops throghout Japan, and sometimes they do not have to freeze the breads they get, because many of them have been frozen in better ways than they do in their refrigerators.

The drastic changes in the business imvironments due to coronavirus pandemic have caused a lot of incovieniences in our society, but at the same time, they have brought about many changes for the better that open up possibilities in the future.

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