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As recommendations to stay home and avoid going out continue in order to help stave off the spread of coronavirus, more and more people are eating at home and taking up hobbies like cooking and baking to pass the time. As a result, the demand for basic ingredients like flour has gone up as increasing numbers of home chefs are buying it to cook with, which has caused the stock of flour products in some supermarkets to run dry.
In the wake of stores selling out, some cunning citizens have turned entrepreneur and taken it upon themselves to resupply the flour market–by reselling flour products at exorbitant prices. On Japanese e-commerce site Mercari, sellers are typically offering flour, pancake mix, okonimiyaki mix, takoyaki mix, and other flour-based batter mixes at two to three times their normal price, and sometimes much more. One seller was even selling one-kilogram bags of bread flour for as much as 1,980 yen each (though those specific listings have since been removed.)
The Japanese government, however, wants its citizens to know that there is no production shortage of flour. The minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Taku Eto, called the price gouging “extremely outrageous” at a cabinet meeting held on May 1 and expressed concerns that resellers will spark panic buying in other citizens, who, upon seeing the flour for sale online, may come to the conclusion that there is a shortage. “If this reselling continues, the ministry will have to take action,” he said.
Both Eto and the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who held a press conference after the cabinet meeting, encouraged citizens not to panic buy. “We’re aware of the low stock of flour products in some stores,” Suga said. “Currently we have a domestic stockpile of the raw materials needed to make flour, so there is no shortage. Mills were asked to continue working in full production even over the Golden Week holidays, so please make your purchases calmly and rationally.”
As for the administrators of apps like Mercari, they’re doing their own part to combat price-gouging sellers. Mercari itself has released a statement saying that they noticed an increase in flour products listed on its website, but not a significant change in the price of flour. Nevertheless, they are putting efforts into removing overpriced listings, and have also banned the sale of medical equipment such as masks, since selling them at high prices became a major problem in the initial panic, and has since become illegal.
So though there is currently a minor shortage of flour products in stores in Japan, it’s not a permanent shortage, and supermarkets should restock their flour products soon.
Source: NHK News via Hachima Kiko
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- External Link
- https://soranews24.com/2020/05/06/flour-products-sell-online-for-outrageous-prices-in-japan-as-demand-for-them-skyrockets/
24 Comments
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Mirai Hayashi
opportunist scumbags!
Tom
When someone loses their job(s) and they cannot support themselves or others in the family while not receiving their meager ¥100,000 they must resort to other means.
Yubaru
You know, while I am totally against price gouging at stores here, online, it's "buyer-beware" in my book.
If there are folks who are willing to get proverbially raped and buy this stuff online, it's on them! If no one buys it, the sellers are stuck.
There's a sucker born every minute!
Yubaru
So which is it?
Seems to me, that this is another thread meant only to stir the pot! I do all the shopping for my family, and roughly a month ago, there were stores that were sold out of specific types of flour, BUT not ALL flour.
Now all these things are totally available!
Taro
Who’d thought this white powder would be worth gold dust prices? I thought I was looking at a Japanese food shop outside of Japan when I saw the prices!
smithinjapan
If you don't want it for that price, don't buy it, plain and simple. Your life isn't depending on you getting some takoyaki mix, and perhaps the people who have it want to unload some. The only problem here, besides the questionable morality in price-gouging, is if shops are selling stuff to people in bulk when they have only a limited amount. Ie., if people are hoarding. Now they know there is a shortage, so supermarkets should be limiting. I happen to have a lot of stock, some of it I bought quite a bit before Corona because I always keep a healthy supply in case of emergency. Some I bought in cases on Amazon when reporting on the virus started. Not hard to predict. It's sitting next to the numerous rolls of toilet paper, tissues, and hand sanitizer. It's enough to last me and mine a while, and I'm not selling it (I have given some flour away to a friend who couldn't find any).
Now, another problem that has seen this develop is the fact that people shop here daily for what they plan to use THAT DAY, which is why Koike's request to only shop once every three threw the elderly into a tizzy. If you don't keep anything on hand, don't expect it to be waiting for you in this kind of situation.
gaijintraveller
Isn't it rather hypocritical for the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Taku Eto, to call the price gouging “extremely outrageous".
The price of rice and many other agricultural products in Japan is extremely outrageous, the taxes on imported rice. Isn't JA guilty of price gouging. The restrictions on some other agricultural products such as butter are extremely outrageous, and the recent butter shortage was the result of his ministries regulations.
Price gouging by businesses seems quite acceptable, but by individuals trying to make a few yen to survive it is outrageous.
garypen
I haven't had any issue buying flour at normal price from my regular weekly delivery company.
Kobe White Bar Owner
I’m with Yubaru. If people are willing to pay it then do be it. Buyers get shafted every day but now it’s wrong that individuals do the shafting and not the corporations. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Mark
"“If this reselling continues, the ministry will have to take action,” he said.""
As always TOOOO Late Sir.
Responsible businesses have always done it.
It should be the store responsibility to limit the purchases or control over buying so all customers can have access to their stock.
By limiting the number of same item purchase per person whenever shortages or over buying accrue.
These limitations are the norm in times of crises and should have been implemented on Masks, Sanitizers, Toilet papers, and so on.
Pukey2
Even at their normal price, I've always felt that buying bread was always cheaper than making it yourself in Japan. Ridiculously over-priced, even before the pandemic. Then again, the bread in Japan is god damn awful. As bad as the typical Japanese 'peanut butter'.
Do the hustle
Scalpers!
toolonggone
I wonder what % of Japanese houses have ovens for baking or how often they bake since baked goods aren't really a part of the traditional Japanese cuisine.
cleo
Except that the soft white sweet cotton-bread you can buy cannot compare in any way with a proper home-naked whole meal loaf.
The article mentions ‘flour, pancake mix, okonimiyaki mix, takoyaki mix, and other flour-based batter mixes’, so mainly for cooking on a hot plate or frying pan, not in an oven. Most Japanese I know who might contemplate making their own bread would consider one of those electric bread-makers to be an essential item.
cleo
Home- naked??
Gives bread a whole new perspective...
Jane Ang
The same crazy hike of flour prices happened in Amazon.jp too, and it seems we cannot do anything about it to report this.