Convenience stores, restaurants working to hire housewives

October 9, 2017

TOKYO- Aiming to enlist the help of housewives to make up serious labor shortages, convenience store and restaurant operators in Japan have set up day care facilities and are holding seminars to play up a friendly working environment.

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. has recently opened two nursery schools for employee use, one in central Tokyo's Ota Ward and the other in a district in Hiroshima, western Japan, where a large number of children are waiting to be admitted to child care facilities.

The nursery school in Tokyo is housed on the second floor of a Seven-Eleven convenience store.

"I've found at the same time the place where I can leave my daughter and my workplace. It's helpful," a 32-year-old housewife in Ota Ward who attended the opening ceremony of the nursery school with her daughter, 3.

The company plans to discuss whether to establish more such nursery schools after looking at how the two facilities are used, officials said.

Zensho Holdings Co., the operator of the Sukiya chain of "gyudon" beef-on-rice bowl restaurants, currently runs two nursery schools in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan.

Convenience store operator FamilyMart Co. started a new recruiting campaign in September in which the company's president gave housewives a briefing on job opportunities at the chain.

The briefing session, which took place in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, was the company's first of its kind. It will be followed by more such meetings in other locations.

FamilyMart, a unit of FamilyMart Uny Holdings Co. , aims to double the number of housewives who work part time at the chain to 100,000 in the future.

McDonald's Holdings Co. (Japan) has provided housewives with opportunities to work at about 2,900 outlets across Japan on a trial basis.

Yakult Honsha Co. which produces and sells Yakult lactic acid beverage products, is suffering a lack of "Yakult Lady" delivery personnel, consisting mainly of housewives, due to an outflow to other industry sectors.

The company is making more active use of the Internet to solicit job applications, in addition to the conventional recruiting method of using fliers. It is also highlighting 1,200 child care facilities it operates across the nation. Jiji Press