Sunday, August 19, 2012

Markets in Everything / The Culture that is Japan

Non-price competition in the Japanese fast food market has lead to some interesting menu items at American based chains.


Here's the $16 foie gras burger from Wendy's:




and Pizza Hut's "pigs in a blanket crust" pizza:




many more exotic entrees can be seen at the link above.

I wonder if good old price competition (4 whoppers for a nickel!!!) is outlawed/discouraged in Japan, or if the Japanese consumer somehow finds price competition unseemly? My money is on the former.

Hat tip to Mrs. Angus!





4 comments:

mike shupp said...

Just guessing, of course, but in the USA most of us have grown up with the idea of burgers being a low-cost meal. There's always sommebody selling them for $1.75 at a lunch truck or something to keep chipping away at Macdonald's profit margins! But in Japan and elsewhere, burgers first appeared in the 1960s as exotic and thus expensive luxuries, so consumers never caught on to the notion of fast food being especially cheap.

Unknown said...

This is just payback for all of the ways we've bastardized Asian food.

Hasdrubal said...

Remember that this is a country where a poisonous fish is considered a delicacy and a couple people a year die eating it.

I think non-price competition like this might be more of a cultural phenonemon in this case, they're just weird about food. Especially western food. (If you like fish, most traditional Japanese food would fit the American pallet quite well.)

What surprises me is the size of some of these things, 5 pattie Whopper? Mega Mac? In a nation where a single McDonald's Hamburger is about the normal portion size...

Unknown said...

Wow!! It really Great dish in japan,We love this dish.Thanks for this wonderful dish.


domy z drewna