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

https://abio.substack.com/p/america-could-have-4-lunch-bowls

by 627467 • 6 months ago

170 310 6 months ago

abio.substack.com

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• 6 months ago

And nobody who sells $4 lunch bowls will have enough cash left over to lobby for rule changes in their favour.

falcor84• 6 months 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

throw0101d• 6 months ago

POSIWID

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Analemma_• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

Dwedit• 6 months ago

Why does the article start talking about Japan, then show some photo of Koreatown Manhattan?

IAmBroom3• 6 months ago

Because the author quite literally does not care about accuracy. They handwave claims without any evidence at all.

abi005• 6 months 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?

alephnerd2• 6 months 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/

[1] https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/apac/en/insights/markets-an...

[2] https://www.iima.or.jp/docs/newsletter/2025/nl2025.48.pdf

[3] https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1

[4] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...

[5] https://asia.nikkei.com/opinion/sanseito-brings-far-right-po...

[6] https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/japan-election/nostalgia-an...

[7] https://asia.nikkei.com/business/travel-leisure/japan-s-tour...

[8] https://therobinreport.com/japans-backlash-on-luxury-tourism...

[9] https://www.princetonpoliticalreview.org/international-news/...

pantalaimon• 6 months ago

Japan’s minimum wage ($6.68 an hour) is similar to America’s ($7.25).

alephnerd2• 6 months ago

1. American state minimum wage supersedes the national minimum wage [0]

2. The median household income in Japan is significantly below the US ($25,000 [1] versus $83k [2]), let alone other OECD members.

[0] https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage...

[1] https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1

[2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...

yourusername• 6 months ago

But does anyone actually make minimum wage in the US? Statistics i can find suggest it is around 1% with Japan closer to 20%.

seanmcdirmid• 6 months ago

$13-15/hour is the minimum even in Mississippi, which are the rates McDonald’s advertises for crew there.

gruez2• 6 months ago

to America’s ($7.25).

That's the federal minimum wage. The actual minimum wage, factoring in state and local rates is actually around $12, 65% higher.

https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20251122_FNC...

oivey2• 6 months ago

Besides what all these other commenters are saying, probably many of the people running these small lunch shops in Japan are the owners, not waged employees. On top of that, that business probably isn’t viable for 8 hours per day.

pibaker2• 6 months ago

Now try actually hiring anyone at $7.25 an hour.

Not to mention most states have their own minimum wage at over $10.

sarchertech4• 6 months ago

Minimum wage doesn’t tell you as much as you’d think. McDonald’s in my lowish cost of living area starts at $14 an hour.

The US federal minimum wage hasn’t increased in nearly 20 years. Japan raises it regularly.

greenie_beans5• 6 months 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!

triceratops5• 6 months ago

The rent is too high because of zoning laws.

queuebert2• 6 months 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.

greenie_beans5• 6 months ago

the rent is too high because of the market incentives. zoning laws are one of several dynamics that influence the market.

we've built a ton of structures with existing zoning laws when the economy is good, more than we've built during this deregulation paradigm. we stop when the economy or market is bad. very simple concept.

postflopclarity5• 6 months ago

failing to understand that the rent is too high because of zoning laws is lazy analysis.

greenie_beans5• 6 months ago

if you are going to have a rebuttal, at least give a little bit why my take is lazy analysis. (and i'm aware your argument exists, and it's also wrong!)

mrgoldenbrown3• 6 months ago

surely if NYC can do 99c slices, it's not as simple as high rent costs?

etblg• 6 months ago

The day of the dollar slice in NYC is dead, most places have switched to $1.50 slices.

PlatoIsADisease• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

It probably isn't as simple as the writer thinks. Houston, for example, has no zoning laws and no $4 lunch bowls.

milkytron5• 6 months ago

Houston has similar regulations that effectively serve the same purpose to determine land use, which is zoning adjacent.

armenarmen2• 6 months ago

You can get a banh mi for like $5 in Houston

systemtest29• 6 months 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.

erikerikson2• 6 months 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.

antonly3• 6 months ago

This is not true. The UK has a £3.85 meal deal that is a sandwich + a snack + a drink. It's hugely popular.

Germany has the Döner Kebab, it's now about 5-9€, but the have cheaper options available too. Again, hugely popular.

I'm sure most European cities have these.

mrgoldenbrown3• 6 months ago

You are oversimplifying the writer's position. They mention zoning as one reason but also other regulations, health codes (minimum sink counts!) and other things like parking minimums (which houston has had, though they've been removed recently in a lot of cases), reliable and ubiquitous public transit, etc.

pessimizer3• 6 months ago

The writer's title is oversimplifying the writer's position, then.

ensemblehq• 6 months ago

What’s missing from the writer’s analysis is also the desire from the population to create such businesses. Having lived in Asia for a bit, most of these small businesses are not wildly profitable and not everyone is willing to put in the hard work and effort to running these affordable restaurants.

mckeed• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

This is an interesting point...many of the ghost kitchens technically allow pickup.

dismalaf3• 6 months 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.

fzeroracer4• 6 months 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.

AmVess2• 6 months ago

That's not how commercial real estate works.

fzeroracer4• 6 months ago

I disagree, and it's one of the things our new mayor is working towards (imposing a vacancy tax).

Workaccount2• 6 months ago

It sort of is. When a property owner has loan against a commercial property, the lender uses the monthly rent to calculate how much they will loan you. The rent number they use is the last paid rent.

So you, the property owner, end up in a situation where if you lower rent to attract a new tenant, the bank will recalculate your loan, potentially ending in a margin call.

Because you are a heavily leveraged house of cards, a rug pull on a few of these loans could cause a cascade liquidating your commercial inventory. Your business is buy a property, take a loan against it, use that loan to buy a property, etc etc.

Therefore it becomes worth it to carry vacant properties, because they are acting as the stilts holding up your money making properties. The vacancy becomes a cost of doing business, and gets factored into the rent of places that are getting leased.

The current location my office is in, was vacant for 12 years before we signed a lease, owned by a big name commercial real estate firm.

AmVess2• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Does the US really lack cheap easily exploitable labor? What about Uber taxi drivers?

t-310• 6 months 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.

sarchertech4• 6 months ago

McDonald’s starts out at $14 an hour in my lowish cost of living area, so that’s the floor.

milkytron5• 6 months 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.

systemtest29• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

allow everyone living in the city to vote

Who is "everyone" in this case?

dymk2• 6 months ago

Did you not register to vote or something?

freedomben2• 6 months ago

I'm not saying GP was implying this, but my read of their comment is that it would be a bad thing for everyone to start to voting. If a person doesn't know what they're voting for, they're not more likely to make good decisions. They're just more likely to cancel out the vote of someone who did educate themselves.

Spooky23• 6 months ago

There’s a lot you can do. Voting is the entry stake. You can make a big impact with a very low level of political engagement.

Allowing popular referendum for everything just invites a particular and usually really dumb level of politics. You can influence a board’s decision and get some or all of what you want.

IMO one of the biggest problems with society is that you have this view that politics is this idea that it’s some sort of magical thing that is done to you. I can get my city councilman on the phone easily. Probably would get a meeting with my state senator in a few days if need be. Just show up and work with people.

mothballed3• 6 months ago

I think there is a snowball effect with zoning. I specifically sought out a place zoned with no building code checks and hardly any zoning. I value my right to die in a fire a lot more than I value my right to have the jack-boot enter my own property and tell me he knows best.

People like me go to places with fairly free zoning. The jack boot lickers go to places with restricted zoning. Once one has a majority it just snowballs and pushes harder and harder in the direction it is going, because no one wants to buy/build a house in a place that will flip from the one strategy to the other.

vel0city11• 6 months ago

I can't imagine I'd ever want to buy a house from someone who makes a point to live someplace where they can install sub-par plumbing and wiring, that this lack of code compliance was the selling point of where to build.

Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.

ecshafer3• 6 months ago

Building Codes and Zoning are orthogonal concepts. Japan has more lax zoning than the US at large more more stringent building codes.

vjulian2• 6 months ago

This sort of citizen engagement is cute, naïve and ultimately pointless. Where I live in the US the major landowner(s) and local billionaire(s) ultimately controls these things. I’m not being sarcastic.

mgfist• 6 months ago

Where I live in the US the major landowner(s) and local billionaire(s) ultimately controls these things

Idk exactly what you mean by `major landowner(s)`, but where I live, zoning and permitting is controlled by retired people who own homes and have all the time to show up to 2pm meetings on Tuesdays and demand nothing new get built to "preserve character". They are landowners, but they're certainly not billionaires. The young people who need housing are working and thus can't show up, thus nothing gets built, creating a flywheel of stagnation and price increases.

freedomben2• 6 months ago

Yep, largely the same for me. Half the city council and most of the planning commission seats are held by real estate people or developers. The state government is heavily influenced by the Realtors Association, and will frequently override local ordinances at the state level when they don't go favorably enough for the real estate industry. It was pretty disappointing to discover.

soared2• 6 months ago

Just 16 people voted in Glendale’s municipal election amid the pandemic

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/21/glendale-election-coro...

Glendale, Colorado is the quintessential example of this. Like 2,000 people live there due to insane gerrymandering, but there are tons of businesses and money moving around. The mayor gives crazy zoning benefits to his wife (strip club and dispensary on the main road, right next to target and chikfila) among other controversy. Dunafon controls the county with the help of other powerful players.

slibhb• 6 months ago

"We can't do anything because the billionaires" is such dumb cynicism. Actually, local government has a say in zoning almost everywhere in the US. If more people participated, they could make a real difference.

nine_k• 6 months ago

The point of the OP post, AFAICT, is that even in places where there are no powerful billionaire-backed campaigns and lobbying, and people can have their way with simple, effortless voting, too few people even care! And those who act, do so cluelessly, or in a narrowly selfish way.

The most powerful weapon the powerful have against the majority of "ordinary people" is to propagate the idea that all this local stuff is boring and ultimately decides nothing. To make people stop caring.

vjulian2• 6 months ago

I find it curious that I earned -2 points. Perhaps my points in the post were too pointed for some people. That, or some people really love civics theatre.

dv_dt• 6 months ago

Protests come when people are pushed into a corner with little other choice. Participation is more prevalent when people have free time in their lives. Our economics has systematically squeezed free time out in favor of more work to most of our workforce, and particularly hard for young people.

One reason so many local city policies favor the old, is that they're retired and have the time to participate

eigencoder• 6 months ago

I don't think economics have squeezed out free time -- phones squeeze out all our free time.

FeloniousHam• 6 months ago

When in American history have we had more free time for civic participation?

_DeadFred_• 6 months ago

This. I fought against a zoning exception (ironic comment) that would allow an asphalt plant near my children's school. When we showed up at meetings, they were canceled and rescheduled at different times for 'reasons'. I managed to get people there every time, but it was tough for parents to get there, and it seemed like the process had been weaponized against our participation.

sharts• 6 months ago

Protests are also largely useless.

joquarky• 6 months ago

If the economy continues in it's current vector, there will be a lot more unemployed people with idle hands available to do interesting things.

favflam• 6 months ago

Some politician in Japan pushed zoning away from cities up to the prefecture and national level. So locals do not get veto rights over new construction.

milkytron5• 6 months ago

My state did something similar recently as well for land within a quarter mile of transit, they have to be zoned for a minimum number of housing units, and parking minimums cannot be enforced in that radius. Some of the municipalities impacted are suing the state.

cornholio• 6 months ago

It's an archetypal social coordination problem that can't be solved at a local level. If relaxed zoning pushes all new buildings into my neighborhood, because all other vote against it, then I'm going to end up with 20 stories of balconies hanging above my property but see no benefits, not even indirect ones like lower rents leading to lower inflation and prices etc. Some developer will simply capture that rent - both in the rent extraction sense and the real estate rent meanings.

A smart central planner can act for the shared benefit, they are sensitive to the votes of renters in some other high density area that also can't solve the problem locally etc.

m4633• 6 months ago

That statement reminds me of ikiru.

(an akira kurosawa movie about a japanese politician)

dfxm12• 6 months ago

5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state.

FWIW, it is a learned behavior that voting doesn't change much. It doesn't help when elected officials obviously ignore the will of the people (nationally, see polling data on legalizing, or even at least decriminalizing, marijuana, as one example), or when things just get overturned by someone else. My neighborhood "votes" on zoning, but the vote literally means nothing. The city council has to hear how we voted, but they don't have to take the vote into account.

I get that it's easy to scold people that don't vote, but it is more important that people with power do something to earn our votes. Hold them accountable. They're failing us more than our neighbors who have either been taught that voting doesn't matter especially when sometimes voting laws make it harder than it should be to vote anyway.

verisimi• 6 months ago

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

So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?

we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally

Because they are more in line with what you think?

I'm being downvoted - but what is the point of local administrators, except to follow the voters demands? Sure, if you are a local politician, make your case, but local administrators ought to be doing whatever-it-is that people voted for. That's the whole point of voting, as I understand it.

The point is NOT to make people keep voting until they get it right, according to the administratots. That's the wrong way around! The administrators should be enacting whatever the voters want.

blacksmith_tb• 6 months ago

Not the OP, but I took their implication to be that 5% of the electorate decided the direction future development would take (or not take).

milkytron5• 6 months ago

So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?

It doesn't really matter what I think when 5% of the population are controlling policy that impacts 100% of the population.

Because they are more in line with what you think?

No, because they will be impacted for a longer period of time, and are less engaged locally.

packetlost• 6 months ago

It's touched on in this article, but there's a lot more than just zoning that makes it impractical to operate businesses like the ones being talked about. Tax code, health code, ADA, etc. not to mention the complete lack of density in the majority of the US.

As much as I'd love to have something like Matsuya in the US, it's just not practical here. I'm surprised it hasn't been talked about yet, but zoning is also a major factor in the spiraling of housing costs.

nobodyandproud• 6 months ago

I’ll add that I don’t even know how to paricipate; or likely would if I did (inconvenient times, dates).

This is no accident.

Edit: I’m not young, but I didn’t grow up with any sort of privilege.

slumberlust• 6 months ago

How do you even find out about these types of votes? Other than state/federal voting every two years, I wasn't aware there were more times to cast a vote locally.

systemtest29• 6 months 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• 6 months 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

mrgoldenbrown3• 6 months 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?

pixl972• 6 months 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.

soared2• 6 months 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

abi005• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.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

avidphantasm• 6 months 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.

pezezin2• 6 months 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.

15155• 6 months ago

Let's move 33% of the US population into an area the size of Montana and we can have the exact same thing!

georgeburdell• 6 months ago

It’s not that simple. My city in Silicon Valley foists mixed use on most new developments in the form of ground floor retail. Yet it’s often vacant.

jerlam• 6 months ago

They are both called mixed use, but are very different in terms of implementation.

In Japan, you can start and run your own business in your your own house (like your garage), within certain limits. This is why there are businesses in Japan like tiny cafes and shops that are nonviable anywhere else.

Where you and I live, the commercial section is a completely separate unit which is usually quite large, must be rented separately, and comes with a lot of regulations.

jonpurdy• 6 months ago

The best videos on this (in my opinion) which compliment urbankchoze's post:

‣ Not Just Bikes: https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U

‣ Life Where I'm from: https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk

SV_BubbleTime2• 6 months 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.

floatrock4• 6 months 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!

pixl972• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

I feel like this math is double dipping a bit. The 9% net profit figure would have already accounted for associated fees.

oivey2• 6 months 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.

dismalaf3• 6 months ago

Dude when industry wide margins are considered it's net margin. Gross margin on food is typically 70%. Of course, that margin does still get eaten up by a million things and the business is still brutal but they're definitely making gross margin of way more han $1.62 on burgers.

postflopclarity5• 6 months ago

1. food trucks are subject to lots of regulation and fees too

2. burrito trucks sell their burritos at the market clearing price for a burrito, which is $18 because most of that burrito truck's competition is brick-and-mortar restaurants with expensive rent because of zoning laws.

vel0city11• 6 months ago

A lot of the interesting food trucks around me are routinely more expensive than the brick and mortar stores around, often due to the novelty of the cuisine.

dismalaf3• 6 months ago

Dude, there's a million regulations for food trucks. Not only do zoning laws typically still apply to them (of course it varies a lot by municipality) there's usually extra regulations on top of that (can't park within X metres of a restaurant for example) and cities often have extortionate fees for permits. It's often tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in permits...

SV_BubbleTime2• 6 months ago

So… you are saying that over-regulation drives prices up. And thus deregulation should be the goal? Does anyone you vote for say this?

t-310• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

dymk2• 6 months ago

The labor is expensive because the rent is expensive.

Guess why the rent is expensive?

consumer451• 6 months ago

I have heard that there are no zoning laws in Houston, Texas.

Are there $4 lunch bowls there?

vel0city11• 6 months 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/par...

armenarmen2• 6 months ago

https://cali-sandwich-pho.restaurants-world.net/menu

$7-9 for bun, and 3.25-5.50 for banh mi

newyankee• 6 months 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.

chasd002• 6 months 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

Disney's 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

pzo2• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

(And it's cold.)

bee_rider2• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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

gruez2• 6 months 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.

iamcalledrob3• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

antonly3• 6 months ago

A Meal Deal is literally £3.85. What are you talking about?

jcfrei• 6 months 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.

iamcalledrob3• 6 months 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.

t-310• 6 months ago

You can get pre-packaged sandwiches in the US (and a bunch of other stuff too, including hot food). I don't buy them and don't know the exact price, but they aren't expensive, definitely under $5. Eating from corner stores and gas stations is just usually looked down on.

taeric2• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

taeric2• 6 months 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• 6 months 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-310• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

veidr5• 6 months 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.

IAmBroom3• 6 months ago

I microwave most of my meals. Solid disagree.

davidw• 6 months ago

We're working on re-legalizing neighborhood businesses here in Bend, Oregon:

https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/neighborhood-commerci...

The city council just had a work session and was quite supportive of the idea.

_23sd• 6 months 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.

abi005• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

pezezin2• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

abi005• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

quacker3• 6 months 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• 6 months 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

quacker3• 6 months 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).

eschulz• 6 months 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.

mapotofu2• 6 months 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.

IAmBroom3• 6 months 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"?

Tempest1981• 6 months 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?

abi005• 6 months 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.

ndjeosibfb• 6 months ago

america is not japan. in america, density and commercial development always = more crime

chasd002• 6 months ago

just wait until Americans find out you can make a $2 lunch bowl every day yourself.

enaaem• 6 months 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.

m4633• 6 months 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• 6 months 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

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

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