11 ms·

America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

• Dwedit 9mo ago
  Why does the article start talking about Japan, then show some photo of Koreatown Manhattan?
  • IAmBroom 9mo ago
    Because the author quite literally does not care about accuracy. They handwave claims without any evidence at all.
    • abi00 9mo ago
      I did that to show that America can have these types of buildings. Anyone can google to see the building in Japan, the building after all, originated in Japan. If it's inaccurate, I'd love to improve it. What part is inaccurate?
• potato3732842 9mo ago
  >Individual regulations, each reasonable in isolation... Every single one of these rules that amounts to death by a thousand cuts preventing these sorts of businesses (as well as many others) will be rabidly defended by many/most if presented in the abstract. That sort of inability to reason about the forest based on what you're doing to the trees is the root problem. And it's a social/ideological/moral one, even if it expresses itself via governments. It's no more "reasonable in isolation" to peddle rules than it is to justify littering in the park because they don't take effect in isolation. If everyone does it everything goes to crap and we all know it so we don't let anyone justify littering in the park using the effect in isolation.
  • HPsquared 9mo ago
    And nobody who sells $4 lunch bowls will have enough cash left over to lobby for rule changes in their favour.
  • mothballed 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • floatrock 9mo ago
      I think you missed the whole point of the story about being able to open up a micro-eatery in front of your home. You know, where you live and want to build up a community. Back when we used to be great, didn't we idolize the local bar where everyone knows your name? That's what these neighborhood shops are. No one wants to go where you'll be poisoned through food contamination. Food safety regulations are a good thing. But when you try to apply the same regulations to a 150-patrons-per-hour fast food operation as you do to a 4 seat neighborhood micro-eatery, well, you're claiming they all have the same 1-size-fits-all risk profile and the end result is you make an entire class of entrepreneurship unattainable. That's not freedom, that's restriction.
      • mothballed 9mo ago
        Having lived in 3rd world I do find food safety regulations to be a bad thing. You can get sick as rarely as you do in regulated countries by following some simple rules in places without regulations. I go to places where I can watch the food being prepared. And make sure it is hot when you eat it. Simple things like this. I have not gotten sick in places like Syria, Iraq, Philippines, etc any more than I do in the US by following simple rules. Yes you have to pay attention but to be honest, you should be applying these rules in USA too, because food inspector and zoning mostly there to protect big business through barrier of entry; they don't actually do that good a job of inspecting or enforcing the rules. The plus here is in places without these regulation the street is full of these tasty food vendors, even more than Japan. It is well worth the lack of safety regulations.
  • falcor84 9mo ago
    I really enjoyed Lex Fridman's interview with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on this topic, as part of their book tour for Abundance. Even if I disagree with some of their proposals, I really liked their focus and clarification of the issue. We should be mindful of the POSIWID principle and be talking a lot more about the results of our policies. https://youtu.be/DTPSeeKokdo https://youtu.be/DTPSeeKokdo
    • throw0101d 9mo ago
      > POSIWID * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
  • Analemma_ 9mo ago
    This is why the "let's slash regulations and cut the size of the government to let business prosper" pitch seems so appealing, and yet never seems to work in practice. The problem is, these kinds of deregulatory pushes always imagine that there are a bunch of price-increasing regulations set up by unaccountable bureaucrats somewhere, and that we can tear those down while making the system simultaneously cheaper and more democratic. A win-win! Supposedly. The problem is, that's not really how it works. There are a bunch of regulations made by bureaucrats, but those tend to be the pretty arcane ones which are necessary but aren't adding a lot of cost (think "what color do the flashing lights on radio towers have to be so planes don't crash into them"). And simultaneously, there are a bunch of regulations which are actually driving costs up, but those are the ones either broadly supported by the public, or supported by one particular interest group who will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it because their livelihood or home equity depends on the rent extraction. To actually cut costs with deregulation, you need to fight ugly political battles often against sympathetic groups (homeowners, doctors, teachers, construction workers etc.), which no politician wants to do, so they instead try to pretend that "bureaucrats" (who could be less sympathetic than bureaucrats?) are to blame.
    • ak217 9mo ago
      That's exactly right. I have so many frustrating stories from local politics that go exactly like you described. There is hope. Scott Wiener is a California politician who saw that these problems can't be resolved at the local level and got himself elected to the state legislature. He is smart about how he sets up the battles so he has had very good results incrementally improving California's zoning - and other things - by gradually restricting local zoning authority when it's abused. We are not yet at the "convenience store at the subdivision corner" stage, but give him time.
• alephnerd 9mo ago
  Pay Japanese salaries, get Japanese prices [0]. That $4 kombini bento feels like a $13 burrito or Cava bowl when on a Japanese salary. Japan only appears cheap if you earn in USD, GBP, and Euros. For most Japanese households, costs have risen higher than salaries [1][2] and they are now facing inflation due to tourist spending [7][8][9]. It also doesn't help that the median household income in Japan is around $25,000 [3] compared to $83,000 [4] in the US. Even Koreans (who used to be Japan's "Mexicans") now earn more in Korea than in Japan, which is a massive psychological shock in JP. This is why you've starting seeing the rise of populist far right parties like 参政党 in Japan campaigning on an anti-tourist and anti-foreigner plank - it's overwhelmingly young Japanese (18-34) who are facing the brunt of tourism-induced inflation and a bad job market, and have as such shifted right [5][6]. And mainstream Japanese parties like the LDP have had to shift further right as a result. [0] - https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/c14023/ https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/c14023/ [1] - https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/apac/en/insights/markets-and-investing/asf/japan-leading-the-pack-but-behind-the-curve https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/apac/en/insights/markets-an... [2] - https://www.iima.or.jp/docs/newsletter/2025/nl2025.48.pdf https://www.iima.or.jp/docs/newsletter/2025/nl2025.48.pdf [3] - https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1 https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1 [4] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28... [5] - https://asia.nikkei.com/opinion/sanseito-brings-far-right-populism-to-japan https://asia.nikkei.com/opinion/sanseito-brings-far-right-po... [6] - https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/japan-election/nostalgia-and-youtube-sanseito-mines-yearning-for-a-lost-japan-in-election https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/japan-election/nostalgia-an... [7] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/travel-leisure/japan-s-tourism-dilemma-japanese-are-being-priced-out-of-hotels https://asia.nikkei.com/business/travel-leisure/japan-s-tour... [8] - https://therobinreport.com/japans-backlash-on-luxury-tourism/ https://therobinreport.com/japans-backlash-on-luxury-tourism... [9] - https://www.princetonpoliticalreview.org/international-news/japans-double-edged-sword-the-hidden-costs-of-japans-tourism-surge https://www.princetonpoliticalreview.org/international-news/...
  • pantalaimon 9mo ago
    > Japan’s minimum wage ($6.68 an hour) is similar to America’s ($7.25).
• greenie_beans 9mo ago
  reducing everything to zoning laws is lazy analysis. nobody will ever sell $4 lunch bowls in SF because the rent is too high. so these market incentives will influence/force the proprietor to sell them for more!
  • triceratops 9mo ago
    The rent is too high because of zoning laws.
    • queuebert 9mo ago
      All things being equal, SF has some of the most desirable weather on the planet, so it will always have an high cost of living due to excess demand.
      • postflopclarity 9mo ago
        it's a great place to live and there will always be high demand. there would be more supply if not for restrictive zoning laws. and more supply = lower prices
        • lux-lux-lux 9mo ago
          SF has a relatively high ratio of housing units to population compared to other cities in the US and a 9.7% vacancy rate. By the numbers, it has an oversupply of housing.
          • postflopclarity 9mo ago
            housing units : population is not a very salient statistic
          • wpm 9mo ago
            By just those numbers, sure. How many are homeless? What does the median worker spend in money and time commuting from somewhere further?
• PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
  The parking thing caused us not to buy a building. Not enough spots, not enough handicap spots too. The annoying part is that we lived 4 houses down from the building. We would never drive there ofc. The other thing is that the parking lot was so small, all spaces could be seen as Handicap accessible. Instead we rented in a different area and the handicap spaces are significantly further from the building. Maybe it ended up working out since our company grew and I know that space would not have been big enough.
• criddell 9mo ago
  It probably isn't as simple as the writer thinks. Houston, for example, has no zoning laws and no $4 lunch bowls.
  • milkytron 9mo ago
    Houston has similar regulations that effectively serve the same purpose to determine land use, which is zoning adjacent.
    • armenarmen 9mo ago
      You can get a banh mi for like $5 in Houston
  • systemtest 9mo ago
    Or basically all of Europe. Haven't seen $4 lunch bowls (adjusted to local wages) anywhere. Spending "nearly an hour a day cooking" is the norm in most countries here. Eating out is expensive anywhere.
    • erikerikson 9mo ago
      Here in Seattle, it's wildly expensive to go out and we rarely do. When I lived in Portland it was inexpensive (and amazing) so almost everyone went out regularly which supported a ton of restaurants that completed against each other. Not sure what was different but the difference was night and day.
      • makestuff 9mo ago
        Curious what time period this was. For example, if you lived in Portland in 2019 and Seattle in 2023 it could just be inflation causing people to go out less.
        • erikerikson 9mo ago
          Great point. Temporarily separated samplings would have that effect. However, I moved directly from Portland to Seattle. Further, I have returned to Portland and found it to be just as wonderful a place to eat out as before.
• mckeed 9mo ago
  I wonder if you could partially get around this by using the "ghost kitchen" model. Offer food only for delivery, but then "hire" customers to deliver their own meals if they want it cheap.
  • carlgreene 9mo ago
    This is an interesting point...many of the ghost kitchens technically allow pickup.
  • dismalaf 9mo ago
    Delivery apps eat into revenue way too much. Also most ghost "restaurants" aren't small businesses, they're a second (or nth) brand for an existing restaurant.
• fzeroracer 9mo ago
  This is missing the forest for the trees a bit. Our zoning laws do prevent lower footprint businesses, but in reality the problem is less zoning laws and more landlords and rent. If you compare city to city (ignoring other societal issues), cities in Japan have a far lower vacancy rate compared to cities across America. In Seattle I've seen a ton of smaller spaces become vacant and stay vacant for years because landlords aren't interested in lowering rent prices; they're holding onto the building/land itself because it'll appreciate over time and there's little to no cost to them to hold onto empty space. Roosevelt Square here is a great example of what I'm referring to, because you've got prime restaurant and retail space located right next to public transit that's increasingly going empty.
  • AmVess 9mo ago
    That's not how commercial real estate works.
    • fzeroracer 9mo ago
      I disagree, and it's one of the things our new mayor is working towards (imposing a vacancy tax).
      • topspin 9mo ago
        > imposing a vacancy tax That might help a little, but you won't notice. Beating such taxes is done with low value businesses. A mattress store is a typical case, good for holding larger spaces with almost no capital cost: a low overhead business used to hold a retail property until values appreciate. Smaller spaces are held with little clothing stores nobody shops at, or wire transfer shops and such. There is a plethora of such operations holding real estate everywhere, barely breaking even or losing modest amounts of money. It's compelling to imagine there is some brilliant tax fix for every ill, but investors are a lot more agile than tax authorities; they make their living solving these impediments. Handling food is one the costliest ways to hold a commercial property, so that's rarely how its done.
        • 9mo ago
• AmVess 9mo ago
  No one sells $4 lunch bowls in the US because no one wants to work for minimum wage for 12 hours a day. The article makes it seem like a great idea, but people in Japan who run these stores work like dogs and live in poverty for their whole lives.
  • bjourne 9mo ago
    Does the US really lack cheap easily exploitable labor? What about Uber taxi drivers?
    • t-3 9mo ago
      Uber isn't exactly cheap, just cheaper than taxis, which are super-expensive. Kitchen work generally requires some kind of training, often some kind of licensing or certification, and is rarely the cheapest type of labor. Anyway, the main issue here is population density, not labor availability. If there tens or hundreds of thousands of people working and living in a quarter mile radius and average foot traffic was in hundreds or thousands per hour rather than dozens or less it would likely be easy to sell $4 bowls and make a profit - most of the US is vastly less dense and walkable than that though, even in cities.
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • sarchertech 9mo ago
      McDonald’s starts out at $14 an hour in my lowish cost of living area, so that’s the floor.
• milkytron 9mo ago
  I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned: In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should cap housing construction, 10% of the population voted. 5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state. Among those voters, most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses. Most people do not realize how zoning impacts the daily life of everyone in an area, and how it impacts personal finances, which businesses will thrive, and public finances. Where I live, we have an absurd number of chains, and local businesses struggle. Part of this is out of our control, but the part that is (minimum parking requirements, single use zoning, etc) continuously gets upheld against changes that would help local businesses. I think we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally. Many young people will protest national or state policies and be engaged at those levels, which is great, but very little time/energy is spent where they could directly see meaningful impact on their lives.
  • systemtest 9mo ago
    A good start would be to allow everyone living in the city to vote. I don't care about politics, zoning or planning if I am not allowed to vote or participate. There isn't anything I can do, so why bother putting effort into it?
    • petcat 9mo ago
      > allow everyone living in the city to vote Who is "everyone" in this case?
      • systemtest 9mo ago
        People who live in the city for the majority of their time. They should be able to vote. Regardless of their housing situation. In basically all of Europe, voting for local elections is tied to having stable housing.
• systemtest 9mo ago
  I've been to the US a couple of times and most restaurants I visited did not have any parking spots at all. I have also seen plenty of food-carts operated by a single person, comparable to the Japanese mini-restaurants described here.
  • jjice 9mo ago
    It's not federal. It'll come down to the state and municipality. If you were in a denser city, it's likely they didn't have that requirement. Lots of New York City doesn't have this kind of requirement, but you may see that if you were in a more suburban area
  • mrgoldenbrown 9mo ago
    I'm guessing you stayed in a major city and didn't drive anywhere outside of it? If you flew in and didn't have a rental car, odds are your itinerary was biased towards places that didn't need a car?
  • pixl97 9mo ago
    Yea, the vast majority of restaurants in the US do, but the US is insanely huge and the places tourists are more apt to visit are higher density.
• soared 9mo ago
  Missing from the article that also plays a role: * optimizations. Some of these restaurants don’t have a counter, or any customer facing staff. Select your meal and pay at a vending machine, get your ticket number, wait for your order to be called. * onsen/community center: it’s entirely feasible to own less things and have fewer sq/ft at home if you can go to your local rec center to shower/spa, watch tv, sit on the couch, eat dinner, hang out with friends, etc. as a tourist my meal+spa+etc was maybe $10? * public transit: a lot of these shops are viable in Tokyo because rails move people en masse quickly
  • abi00 9mo ago
    Thanks for the flag, the $4 places I went to didn't have this, so I wasn't aware. Those probably help decrease prices too.
• gbhdrew 9mo ago
  The key point here (and biggest advantage of Japanese cities) is that nearly every building is mixed-use by default, regardless of local density levels. This post does a great job illustrating the difference this makes: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.htm... For comparison, even our best-case scenarios for urbanism here in the states (like NYC) have incredibly convoluted zoning rules, which in turn make it impossible to build anything new without intervention from the city/state: https://zola.planninglabs.nyc/about#9.72/40.7125/-73.733 https://zola.planninglabs.nyc/about#9.72/40.7125/-73.733
  • avidphantasm 9mo ago
    > The key point here (and biggest advantage of Japanese cities) is that nearly every building is mixed-use by default, Also, Japan generally has good mass transit throughout their cities, which essentially doesn't exist in the US. Less mass transit -> more cars -> need for parking -> larger buildings with setbacks to include parking -> less density -> less mass transit... Land use and transportation systems in the US have been co-evolved to the present sub-optimal state we have now.
    • pezezin 9mo ago
      This is a big misconception. The core neighborhoods of the big Japanese cities are dense, mixed-use, and have good mass transit. But as soon as you move a bit further away, they degenerate into endless urban sprawl like American cities. I know because I live in a small Japanese city, and it is just box stores, small detached houses, and two-story apartments.
      • vel0city 9mo ago
        > they degenerate into endless urban sprawl like American cities. I will note, I have not lived in Japan. I'm just going by what I've seen hopping in street view on a lot of the smaller towns. Please do correct me if I'm wrong. While yes, the small towns are way more sprawlly than the big cities in Japan. However, what I've seen doesn't even come close to how spread out things are in much of the US. Can you point to any place that looks like this[0] in Japan? Note, that is an "urban" area, not rural. Sure, far more people get around by car. Transit access falls off considerably. Big box stores have actual parking lots. But I don't see parking lots like this[1] common when browsing around on Google Maps. If anything, a lot of these sprawling small towns are far more dense and walkable than what even "dense" US cities are! A lot of the streets I'm seeing making up a lot of these towns are a good bit narrower than what most neighborhood residential streets I've lived on here in the US. [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wm2LcemskN6tB5nP6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wm2LcemskN6tB5nP6 [1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/9qhyJjKpTRGoKunn6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/9qhyJjKpTRGoKunn6 Feel free to show me parts of Japan I'm missing though. Maybe it exists and I haven't seen it yet, I did just kind of hop between a dozen or so small towns all over Japan.
• SV_BubbleTime 9mo ago
  Ok… if this is the case, then why are food trucks charging $18 for a burger and fries now? It isn’t all zoning laws.
  • floatrock 9mo ago
    from the article: > But the restaurant industry fights to limit food trucks. On average, food trucks must handle 45 separate regulatory procedures and spend $28,276 on associated fees. Lets napkin-math this. If we assume a food truck has margins at the upper end of the fast-casual industry of 9%, then each $18 burger-and-fries nets 1.62 in profit. $28,276 / 1.62 = 17,454 burgers-and-fries. If you were open every day of the year and assume no seasonality, that means your first 49 orders every day go just to regulatory fees. And that doesn't cover any of the other fees and expenses a food truck might have. Those are brutal economics. I'm impressed it's only $18!
    • pixl97 9mo ago
      Yea, if people are thinking you can just grab a truck and park it wherever you like, they are in for a big wake up call. The last city I lived in had the brick restaurant owners lobby and fight like hell to stack up every regulation they could on food trucks.
    • silisili 9mo ago
      I feel like this math is double dipping a bit. The 9% net profit figure would have already accounted for associated fees.
    • oivey 9mo ago
      > If you were open every day of the year and assume no seasonality, that means your first 49 orders every day go just to regulatory fees. This looks crazy because it is incorrect. In your premise, that 9% profit margin includes the regulatory costs for a brick and mortar restaurant already. The only way your logic works out is if truck regulations are on average $30k more expensive than a regular building, which they almost certainly are not. You can’t even begin to do the calculation without knowing the breakdown underlying the profit margin you cite.
• t-3 9mo ago
  Zoning performs some important functions, but is often used to set up barriers-to-entry. I somewhat doubt that zoning is the problem here because there were plenty of cheap restaurants before the recessions, covid, and trade-war inflation. The US population is low-density, low-engagement, and low on disposable income. The food service industry has adapted by targeting the wealthiest, who have plenty of disposable income and are much more willing to spend than low-wage workers who can barely afford eggs and milk from a grocery store.
• cruffle_duffle 9mo ago
  You’re not getting $4 lunch bowls in Seattle when minimum wage is more than $20/hr. You aren’t getting affordable anything when labor is so expensive. (You also aren’t getting your 16 year old their first job either when labor costs more than your kid is worth but that is another topic entirely) Zoning is only one tiny piece of the puzzle.
  • dymk 9mo ago
    The labor is expensive because the rent is expensive. Guess why the rent is expensive?
• consumer451 9mo ago
  I have heard that there are no zoning laws in Houston, Texas. Are there $4 lunch bowls there?
  • vel0city 9mo ago
    There are still requirements for the types of use classifications (including things like parking minimums[0]), there are still food safety regulations, etc. The lax zoning laws doesn't mean there are no rules, just that there are no rules preventing you from having an eatery right next to an active oil and gas well right next to a townhouse right next to a liquor store right next to a welding shop. [0] https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/parking_req.pdf https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/par...
  • armenarmen 9mo ago
    https://cali-sandwich-pho.restaurants-world.net/menu https://cali-sandwich-pho.restaurants-world.net/menu $7-9 for bun, and 3.25-5.50 for banh mi
• newyankee 9mo ago
  Honestly, at this point, may be someone can collect a bunch of like minded individuals and build a city from scratch that ticks all the boxes instead of fighting existing vested interests. Then, hopefully it can be a model for others to review and check. The problem with US or any other country is that too many things that should not be ideological become ideological. So many people would be happy to live in a 1400 sq ft 3 bedroom house over 2500 sq ft single family homes if a lot of other things were provided.
  • chasd00 9mo ago
    Building a city from scratch has been attempted a few times. Disney tried to make a city once and now Musk is trying to do the same. They don't work out. Musk's city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbase,_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbase,_Texas Disney's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept) Also, see the Simpsons's episode "They Saved Lisa's Brain" which, btw, has a very funny guest appearance by Stephen Hawking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa%27s_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa%27s_Brain
    • pzo 9mo ago
      you don't have to build new city from scratch just do city planning and dedicate one outside part of city to high density, high tower residential buildings then let me people decide where they want to live.
• joshuaheard 9mo ago
  America is going in the opposite direction with instant food delivery. Your $11 meal is delivered to your house within 30 minutes. But, there's a service fee of $5, a delivery fee of $6, and a 20% gratuity.
  • ceejayoz 9mo ago
    (And it's cold.)
  • bee_rider 9mo ago
    There’s something very weird in the US, it’s like we intentionally set things up to accelerate convergence to obviously dumb local optima and then don’t explore any options to get over those barriers.
    • Cornbilly 9mo ago
      I think we just lack the ability for self-critique as a country. If you try, you get a bunch of loud morons yelling at you for being un-American or some other nonsense.
• oncallthrow 9mo ago
  Not convinced, plenty of countries (e.g. UK) don’t have such stringent don’t have strict zoning laws and also don’t have $4 food
  • antonly 9mo ago
    A Meal Deal is literally £3.85. What are you talking about?
  • gruez 9mo ago
    >don’t have such stringent don’t have strict zoning laws I thought the planning process in UK is even more perilous because of the lack of zoning laws? Everything is up to council review, which basically means vibes based instead of something that's codified.
    • iamcalledrob 9mo ago
      Unlike the US, the UK's planning system doesn't have exclusive zoning as the default. This is the big difference. It's totally normal to have shops, restaurants and houses in the same area, and often on the same street.
    • Ekaros 9mo ago
      Mixed zoning might not be issue. But that still doesn't mean there is not limited zoning. Or massive over head in various regulations and documentation burdens.
  • jcfrei 9mo ago
    UK is famous for having extremely tough zoning laws, with many, many buildings being listed / landmarked. Something that does run very well in the UK are stores like Greggs which are usually classified as small shops (cat. E) without a kitchen. So the analysis applies there as well.
  • iamcalledrob 9mo ago
    It is totally possible to get a $4 lunch in the UK. Basic pre-packaged sandwiches can be had for under $2. For about $4.75 you can get a sandwich, pastry, and a latte from just about any of the chain corner shops (Tesco Express etc) It's not gourmet, but it's a solid affordable option that millions of people eat every day. There's no real equivalent of this in the US sadly.
• taeric 9mo ago
  So many odd questions raised in this article. Literally each section seems to just hand wave a lot of things. And, look, I am all for attacking some regulations; but I have to confess the requirement for multiple sinks is going to be far down my list of regulations that have to go. Odd to see it be one of the top mentioned ones, here. The biggest question, for me, is raised when the complaint is dropped that we spend about an hour in the kitchen. I cannot believe that that is an meaningful number to compare between city and urban/rural living. Which, at large, is a big part of the problem with looking at anything from places like Tokyo. They have density that many in the US just don't understand. The article even largely acknowledges this by comparing Manhattan pizza shops. A business model that you just can't magically make work in less dense cities.
  • AlotOfReading 9mo ago
    Density is also a problem caused by zoning/permitting regulations. SF, LA, and even NYC should all be more dense than they currently are. Not being able to increase their density just means that prices have gone up instead.
    • taeric 9mo ago
      I can get behind that message, to a large extent. The rest of the complaints are largely all downstream of that, though? The reason places don't have the same cheap food options that denser locations have is pretty much fully down to the density question. And sure, we can tackle making places denser. A large hurdle there is that people want both the space that they currently have, along with the benefits of higher density. And that just doesn't work.
• thrance 9mo ago
  Restaurants will charge what people are able to pay. My office is on the third floor of a century-old parisian building, in the heart of the city. The street is filled with tiny restaurants, some of which serve these "healthy lunch bowls" that the US apparently lacks. Except they're 14€ here (without drinks or desserts), because people have the money to pay for it, and do so. You can relax zoning laws, but no one will price their bowls at $4 in the richest country on Earth, obviously.
  • t-3 9mo ago
    I used to be able to get $3 breakfast and $5 lunch (ok, tipping rounds those up, but the base price is there) at nearly any Coney Island in the Detroit metro. It's not about richness or zoning, it's all about population density and disposable income. People in the US are poorer than we used to be, so restaurants only target the rich. US cities are remarkably fluffy and often less dense than suburbs in other countries. It's that simple.
• zug_zug 9mo ago
  Just having visited Japan, another thing that's immediately apparent though is that there are other well-intentioned laws that prevent this from happening. My favorite breakfast was like $8 (which was better than American breakfast by an order-of-magnitude) was in a tiny shop that had a tiny curved staircase that could scarcely fit tall people, definitely not obese people, and don't even pretend handicap people. Frankly I think alternative laws should be applicable (you don't need to be able seat wheelchair people if you're willing to bring the food to them to-go) since I just think it's not worth losing that efficient density and cost-effectiveness for a tiny tiny fraction of the population.
• jawns 9mo ago
  If you want a fast, healthy, balanced meal for $4 or less, the obvious choice in America is a frozen meal (aka TV dinner). You can microwave it in 4-6 minutes; ingredients are often flash-frozen, locking in nutrients; and food-safety concerns are addressed at scale, rather than in a hit-or-miss way in a tiny storefront. So perhaps, instead of advocating for more tiny restaurants that would likely need to skimp on safety considerations, we should be advocating for more microwaves available in grocery and convenience stores, so people can select a frozen meal, heat it up, and be on their way.
  • veidr 9mo ago
    Not sure I can accept most of your assertions, but anyway, I left America in 2008 and IIRC there were microwaves available in every 7-11 even then? There were't any $4 healthy bowls of anything, but there were $2 "red hot beef & bean" (& fake soy filler) burritos which hit the spot if you'd failed to find a way to eat real food... The problem with the microwave solution, I think, is that pretty much only burritos and pasta can be packaged in a microwavable way that still tastes good? And maybe like a few kinds of vegetable side dishes.
    • IAmBroom 9mo ago
      I microwave most of my meals. Solid disagree.
      • veidr 9mo ago
        What do you eat?
• davidw 9mo ago
  We're working on re-legalizing neighborhood businesses here in Bend, Oregon: https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/neighborhood-commercial https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/neighborhood-commerci... The city council just had a work session and was quite supportive of the idea.
• _23sd 9mo ago
  What a trash article. Why is the only photo, used to illustrate the point about narrow buildings, a photo of Manhattan instead of anything in Japan? When "our zoning laws" are enumerated, where are they talking about? Last time I checked there were no US federal rules on parking spaces. At least they acknowledge that multiple jurisdictions exist when talking about health codes. And as per usual when talking about Japan, they ignore the fact that Japan also has car-dependent suburbs and rural areas, where it is quite common for restaurants outside of city centers to need to balance costs with the need for a larger footprint and a parking lot. The role of culture in eating habits is also ignored, Americans take more pride in the self-reliance of cooking their own meals.
  • abi00 9mo ago
    Thanks for the questions. I used a picture of Manhattan intentionally to show that it is possible in some parts of America. There's already tons of pictures of that type of building in Japan, where it originated. The zoning laws are at the local and city level, as are the parking spaces. Japan does have car dependent suburbs and rural areas, I'm not saying they don't. It's likely that Japan's $4 meals are concentrated in not-rural areas. I really doubt that Americans take pride in not having cheap lunch options if they want them.
• jcims 9mo ago
  Visited Japan for the first time in December. I stayed at Airbnb's in Tokyo and Kyoto. There were no $4 lunch bowls nearby, but I didn't need that to appreciate that I could walk to six restaurants, two wine shops and three cafes in less than three minutes. It was wonderful.
• pezezin 9mo ago
  I have been living in Japan for years and I would like to know where you can find a lunch bowl for 600 yen which is not a company cantine or industrial konbini shit.
• SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
  The article's diagnosis just doesn't seem connected to the facts. It has nothing to do with "restaurant tiers"; as the first link describes, the "healthy lunch bowls" are provided by the fast food chain Yoshinoya, which sells the same bowls in their US locations for $9.
  • abi00 9mo ago
    This could easily be evidence of my point. The price point that made Yoshinoya viable and made it grow didn't work when it had to enter the US market. We outlawed what makes it viable. It became a $9 tier, not $4 tier.
• xnx 9mo ago
  Japanese fans also will stay to clean up a stadium after the game so I'm not sure how many examples from Japan can be applied to the US without taking step #1 of changing the entire culture, character, and conscientiousness of American society.
• quacker 9mo ago
  This needs more detailed data that normalizes for the amount of food (price per calorie or price per weight or something like that). Yes, a bowl at chipotle in the US might be 2x the price (more, probably) of a Japanese bowl, but it matters if I am getting 2x the calories also. And there are foods in the US that are technically as cost effective, although maybe not as nutritious, like pizza which they mention, that can be around $1-$3 per slice. (Not my first choice for a lunch, but I could pickup a large 3 topping dominos pizza for $10 and make 3-4 lunches out of it, for example)
  • 627467 9mo ago
    > In Japan, workers rely on healthy lunch bowls for under $4 The title doesn't capture that, but the issue is not that the US can't produce $4 lunches. It's it can't enable cheap(er) healthy lunches
    • quacker 9mo ago
      I'm not sure what your point is. Is it about the lunches being specifically healthy? A rice bowl at Chipotle, for example, is not unhealthy (rice, beans, meat, vegetables). Plenty of restaurant food in the US is perfectly healthy (or, you can look at nutrition facts to know if it is). And if I can take a single US portion size and split it into two lunches that are Japanese-sized portions, then maybe we're getting the same amount food per dollar. And on the "healthy" point: The article doesn't discuss nutrition facts at all or refer to any specific meals or dishes. They link to an article concerning the price of Japanese bowls, that mentions "a regular-sized bowl of rice with beef from Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya, which costs around 468 yen (S$4.25)." I don't know Japanese so it's hard for me to find nutrition information about that particular dish, but I suspect that a beef bowl is high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium (because most stir-fried beef is higher in these things). Is that healthy? Japan as a country has higher sodium intake than the US. Is that healthy? And so on. I suspect a big factor of the "health" of these lunches is that portion sizes are just smaller than in the US (but I have no data).
      • pzo 9mo ago
• eschulz 9mo ago
  I'm probably the only person here who has been in a Walmart in the last year or two, but recently I found that my local Walmart offers a warm counter with freshly prepared small bites, and you can get a respectable chicken sandwich for $2. It's a decent small meal, and the same item would probably be $6-$12 at a fast foot joint. I guess each individual Walmart is big enough to offer these bites to their shoppers.
  • mapotofu 9mo ago
    That’s not a respectable sandwich. They have it at mine too, by the produce, which would be a better choice than eating that.
    • IAmBroom 9mo ago
      "Respectable" is not something I care about in a sandwich. Beyond your disdain for things from Walmart, how is a filling, tasty sandwich not "respectable"?
      • mapotofu 9mo ago
        I was simply trying to redirect your recommendation to a different part of Walmart, where one can find things that are closer to food, and not rubberized patties of processed blob on imitation white bread, because it’s true what they say - you are what you eat!
• Tempest1981 9mo ago
  > don’t want to spend $11 at Chipotle Nice strawman. How about a $4.59 salad at Carls Jr or Wendy's, or an In-n-out cheeseburger for $4?
  • abi00 9mo ago
    That's why I said healthy lunches e.g. stuff that is cheap because it's from raw ingredients like cooking rice in a rice cooker, rather than from mass-production at scale.
• chasd00 9mo ago
  just wait until Americans find out you can make a $2 lunch bowl every day yourself.
• ndjeosibfb 9mo ago
  america is not japan. in america, density and commercial development always = more crime
• enaaem 9mo ago
  Im currently in Vietnam. Regarding zoning laws it’s literally the wild west here. I don’t think it’s ideal, but it’s very interesting. For example it is flooded with cafes and some people would even open cafes in their home just for fun seemingly. One time I entered a seemingly busy cafe, but it turned out I was the only real customer and the rest were friends of the owner.
• m463 9mo ago
  I met a japanese woman who did something along these lines. She was a VP for a high-tech company in japan. But at some point she decided to slow down. She opened a small bakery. She told me a lot of it is easier than it looks. She has a second "family" now, customers that come every day. I think she sells small meals to go too. If she wants to take the day off, she just closes the store for the day.
• jonehiskey1 9mo ago
  i really hope more and more people recognize that regulations and laws have gotten out of control, and we need a serious rollback of at least half