Ready meals on the rise in time-poor Japan

Overall, market researcher Canadean found that prepared meals ranks sixth out of Japan’s 15 food sectors, though by far, the largest category is ready meals, with value and volume shares of 76.3% and 84.4% respectively for 2012.

This is thanks to the rise in popularity of chilled ready meals and frozen ready meals, and the category is showing no sign it will slow over the next five years—indeed, it is growing ahead of the sector in terms of both value and volume, with compound growth and volume to 2017 of 4.7% and 3.3% respectively.

Both meal kits and pizza have not proved to be quite so popular in the Japanese market, with the latter faring slightly better in 2012, with respective value and volume shares of 18.1% and 7.9% to meal kits’ 5.5% and 7.7% for the same year. The two categories are set to record value and volume growths each of 2.7% and 1.2% between 2012 and 2017.