Today I am writing about food for a new magazine from Melbourne called Condiment (LINK HERE). It is edited by Chris Barton and Jessica Brent, two people doing good things in Australia. The writing is quite slow. It began as an interview with Yoyo, who runs Vege Shokudo in Koenji and also VACANTEEN at the VACANT gallery space in Harajuku. Two of the cities best temporary restaurants. Then I found some journal articles about the conceptual underpinning’s of 7-Eleven and everything changed. Here is a pull out paragraph from the upcoming article:

“The first convenience stores, in America, sold bread, milk, eggs and ice. There is no room for desire with such a utilitarian inventory. But In Tokyo there is only desire when it comes to food. Toshifumi Suzuki makes sure of that. He is the CEO of 7-Eleven; global head of the world’s largest chain of convenience stores. For Suzuki, desire is what his company runs on. Need is not necessary. The point is to give people what they want before they knew they wanted it; to preemptively fulfill eating desires. To achieve this with the highest chance of success, 7-Eleven staff are involved in heavy sessions of ‘knowledge creation’ where they discuss the forecasting of human desire, it is openly tactical and strategic, even going to point of attempting to ‘systematize’ customers unknown tacit knowledge – to help them “externalize deep layers of personal reflection.”

Most of the claims in that text came from ‘Knowledge Creation in the Convenience Store Industry: Seven-Eleven Japan’ by Ikujiro Nonaka. The more i read about Suzuki, the more he turns into a monstrous guru. His plans are nothing short of global domination of the psyche. Photos from the McDonald’s in Nishi-Shinjuku.