Muji to ramp up grocery business in new stores

The company intends to open 50 new stores by August 2022.

Ryohin Keikaku plans to ramp up Muji’s grocery business by allocating 30% of space at its new stores to premium food and drinks, IGD reported.

Muji intends to open 50 new Muji stores by August 2022, with half of these new stores to be in major supermarkets such as Ito-Yokado. These stores will sell fresh bread from its bakery, bento boxes, locally sourced fruits and vegetables, and frozen food.

Doing so will allow Muji to raise the contribution of food items to its sales from 10% currently to 30% in 2030.

Prices of its groceries will generally be set higher, as it aims for better value through environmentally friendly and high-quality products. For items that are normally sold at JPY100 (US$0.9) or JPY200 (US$1.8) in other supermarkets in Japan, these will be available at Meiji at about JPY300 (US$2.7).

The company’s September to November sales in 2020 surged 69% to $115m (JPY12.2b), driven by 60% growth in grocery sales, which Muji attributes to more people working from home because of the pandemic.