Japan launches whale meat vending machines to promote sales
A Japanese whaling operator, after struggling for years to promote its controversial products, has found a new way to cultivate clientele and bolster sales: whale meat vending machines.
A Japanese whaling operator, after struggling for years to promote its controversial products, has found a new way to cultivate clientele and bolster sales: whale meat vending machines.
The Kujira (Whale) Store, an unmanned outlet that recently opened in the port town of Yokohama near Tokyo, houses three machines for whale sashimi, whale bacon, whale skin and whale steak, as well as canned whale meat at prices from 1,000 yen ($7.70) to 3,000 yen ($23).
The outlet features white vending machines decorated with cartoon whales and is the third to launch in the Japanese capital region. It opened Tuesday after two others were introduced in Tokyo earlier this year as part of Kyodo Senpaku Co.’s new sales drive.
Whale meat has long been a source of controversy but sales in the new vending machines have quietly gotten off to a good start, the operator says. Anti-whaling protests have subsided since Japan three years ago terminated its much-criticized research hunts in the Antarctic and resumed commercial whaling off the Japanese coasts.
Kyodo Senpaku hopes to expand the vending machines to 100 locations across the country in five years, company spokesperson Konomu Kubo told The Associated Press. A fourth is set to open in Osaka next month.
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