The tour looked specifically at how convenience retail works in the country, with participants visiting stores in both Tokyo and Kyoto as well as meeting with suppliers of wine, beer and spirits to understand the dynamics of the market and at retail level.
The tour visits stores in Tokyo and Kyoto"Convenience represents approximately 30 per cent of the grocery market in Japan and Japan also has a huge luxury market, so we wanted to see what is being done there and if we can apply that to retail in Australia", said ALSA's Mal Higgs, who was on the tour.
Higgs said that the convenience model in Japan is well developed, with stores offering a broad range of products, including fresh food. According to Higgs, some stores in central Tokyo re-lay their shelves three times a day to cater their offering for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
"We wouldn't now suggest that liquor stores in Australia should move into fresh food, but it got us thinking about the offering here", Higgs said.
"Consumers in Australia assume when they walk into a liquor store that they can only buy liquor and we wonder if we can expand on that."
Higgs said the group believes there is opportunity for liquor retailers to do more in the soft drink category at this stage, with going as far to suggest that some stores could benefit from implementing coffee machines.
"We'd have to look at the store's demographic, because it wouldn't work in every liquor store, but there would be some where a coffee machine could work really well", Mal added.
The group will meet again in May to discuss their findings, before presenting them to industry at the ALSA National Conference in July.
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