FANCY RESTAURANTS IN JAPAN START TAKE-OUT ORDERS

With the food service industry increasingly allowing customers to buy meals to eat at home, takeout food at luxury restaurants has also gained popularity as a way to enjoy set menus at lower prices.

Mainichi Shimbun reported that some eateries are enhancing their menu for the Christmas and New Year season to respond to demand for takeaway home meals. Fast food chains, which already offer takeout services, are also planning to further their efforts.

"Here is your beef pie," a manager of Restaurant Hiramatsu la Reserve, a French restaurant in Tokyo's Minato Ward, said as they handed a takeout meal to a 43-year-old office worker. To celebrate her wedding anniversary, she had ordered 11-dish course meals costing 6,000 yen ($57.28) per person. She smiled and said, "As our child is still young, we would like to take our time and enjoy the tasty food at home."

The restaurant launched a full-scale takeout service at the end of May after suffering a drop in sales from the coronavirus pandemic. Course menus including appetizers and desserts cost 4,000 to 8,000 yen per person. Compared to the lowest priced course meal to eat in, which is set at 5,500 yen, the takeout menus are somewhat cheaper, and the restaurant apparently receives an average of around three to four takeout orders a day. Though the restaurant attracted only about one-third of the number of customers it would normally see in July and August, takeout orders made up about 20% of the restaurant's sales.

Though the restaurant is seeing a recovery in reservation numbers thanks to the government's "Go To Eat" points reward system to spur demand for eating out, takeout menus are also performing well.