"XX" and "XX Earthenware" also appear! How long is the boom? August 21, 20:50
In the Kansai region, imports in the first half of the year increased rapidly by about 20 times compared to the same period last year.
It is more than 4 times in the whole country.
Stores spread throughout the country.
Intense new products that appear one after another.
How long will this food boom continue?
(Reporter from the network reporter Daichi Takahashi / Akihiko Kanno)
That is tapioca you know.
The number of shops offering typical menus and tapioca tea is increasing one after another.
The app for smartphones called “Tapi Navi” was focused on people who “do not know which store to go to because there are too many”.
You can search for stores nearby.
I do n’t know anymore ...
Looking at the app, Tokyo is still the largest number of stores across the country, but there are many stores around Shibuya and Harajuku.
You can see that there are shops every few tens of meters, and there are so many numbers that you can't understand without expanding the map.
Not just downtown
Recently, many people feel that tapioca shops have been established near their homes and nearby stations.
Looking at the map, you can see that shops are expanding all over the country, from not only "youth towns" such as Shibuya, but also from suburban stations along private railways and JR lines to central cities in the region.
30 stores are added every day!
According to the company that operates the app, there are about 1800 stores currently registered throughout the country, and about 30 stores are added every day.
As the stores are born one after another, the app allows you to post and review each review, as well as get coupons for affiliated stores.
Takamasa Goto, who develops and operates Tapinavi, said, “Tapioca is particularly popular with young people such as high school girls. For them, 500 to 600 yen per cup is not so cheap. I think that it is accepted that reviews of nearby stores can be easily seen because there is a feeling that I do not want to think.It is a system where stores are registered by users posting, in the future each region I would like to add a function that displays the ranking of "
And when you hear about the future of the tapioca boom ...
“Recently, I hear stories like“ What's next after Tapioca? ”, But every week there are more tapioca shops and tea stands, and it feels like it ’s still growing. The number of stores has increased, making it difficult to attract customers. ”(Mr. Goto)
Tapioca bowl appeared! !
This tapioca boom is not limited to drinks.
“Fuji Soba”, which sells soba and noodles in the Tokyo metropolitan area, has started offering “Tapioka no Samurai”.
It was sold at the Sankocho branch in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo as a “Mini Ikura style tapioca pickled rice cake set” from August 16th.
How much it looks, but what I use is a genuine tapioca.
According to the “Daitan Eat” operated, it is made by boiling white tapioca for 30 minutes and then adding it to the original sauce with soba soup soup for 4 hours.
The texture of the tapioca is still sticky and the taste is similar to the taste.
“How much tapioca” is thriving on rice.
It seems that they ordered only about 10 meals a day for 3 days from the start of sales, but after 4 days, it became a popular product that could receive orders for 200 meals.
The idea was that the store manager thought, “If I was watching tapioca, I wanted to pickle it.”
Initially it was planned to be sold for a limited period of two weeks, but it seems that the store is also considering extending the offer in response to popularity.
"I was aiming for the topic, but I didn't expect it to be so far. It's a product that takes a lot of time and effort to make, but it's a situation I can't stop"
Tapioca in earthenware?
In addition, there is a growing movement to take advantage of the popularity of tapioca.
At the Hokkaido University Museum, a special exhibition has been held since July to display excavated items such as earthenware excavated on the campus campus.
Among the exhibits, “Hokkaido Pottery” was created at the end of the “Jomon Period” in the 5th to 7th centuries and was named after being found on the campus of the university as the name suggests.
I want more people to know this “Hokkaido pottery”!
At the cafe in the museum, we decided to provide tapioca milk tea in the pottery, commonly known as “Tapi Pottery”, along with the exhibition.
A glass ball excavated from the ruins at the same time as the “Hokkaido ware” was used to make a tapioca and put it in a replica of the ware with milk tea.
The price is a little over 1600 yen, but you can take home the pottery after drinking.
Originally it was a special menu only during the special exhibition, but because it is so popular, it is said that it will be sold after the special exhibition until September.
Associate professor Shingo Eda of the Hokkaido University Museum, who was in charge of the special exhibition, said, “I'm honestly surprised that I do n’t think it ’s going to be so popular. I think. ”
Where is Tapioca?
Tapioca has a sense of sitting all over Japan in an instant, but the boom will end someday.
There are foods and drinks that have ended in a transient fashion.
What will happen to Tapioca?
We interviewed Mari Ariki, senior researcher of Hot Pepper Gourmet Eating and Drinking Research Institute, who is familiar with food trends.
Why is tapioca so popular in the first place?
“The tapioca boom occurred in the early 1990s and around 2008, and this is the third boom. There are three reasons why it has become so popular from the consumer's perspective. The first is the home of tapioca tea, Taiwan is very popular as a travel destination, and the people who have experienced it are returning to Japan, and the second is a line at popular domestic stores That phenomenon was creating a trend further ”(Mr. Ariki)
“And the biggest factor is the spread by SNS. It is easy to take photos in the form of a drink on the left hand and a mobile phone on the right hand, and because the product is colorful and looks like an SNS, I think that it was easy to spread. Wood)
And the end of Tapioca, who is worried about, says Ariki, “I think the boom will continue for a while and will be established”.
The reason is that there is a demand for a cafe instead for those who do not drink coffee.
Tapioca tea, the mainstream of take-out, does not require a large store even from the store side, and the work of employees is relatively simple, so it seems that barriers to entry are low and it is easy to open a store.
Although many brands that are born one after another are progressing, we are analyzing that the products themselves will be able to be bought in front of any station in the future. It was.
“Tapi ○○” is born one after another. It may not be long before tapioca from overseas becomes more familiar and establishes as a new food culture.