A Survey of Japanese Konbini Coffee
Is it possible to find a good coffee at a Japanese convenience store?
Tokyo is certainly not lacking in coffee shops. There are thousands, probably more than any other city on earth. However, they fall into 3 distinct categories. 3rd wave design shops, chains, and convenience stores (“konbini”). Some of the best 3rd wave shops are COFFEE STAND SWAMP, Blue Bottle and Little Nap. These are as good as anything anywhere in the world, making 10/10 cups consistently. The next tier is chains such as Doutor, Cafe Veloce, and Tullys–these are like Starbucks in the USA or Tim Hortons in Canada. There are of course Starbucks in Japan too. At the bottom rung are the ubiquitous convenience store chains, all of which have self-serve coffee machines.
Why would anybody want to drink coffee from a self-serve machine? Well, as I recently found, even in Tokyo there are neighbourhoods without a good coffee shop, and perhaps more importantly there are neighbourhoods with a lot of BAD, expensive coffee shops. These shops may look amazing or have various special gimmicks to draw you in but the coffee itself is lacking. I hate paying high prices for bad quality and find it especially offensive when it’s dressed up in a highly marketed package.
In these situations I find swinging to the opposite end of the pendulum is useful for perspective. If the coffee is not going to be amazing, why pay $6 a cup when you could potentially find the same quality for $1.80 a cup and leave the pretentiousness at the automated door… Thus leads me to a survey of Japanese konbini coffee.
FAMILY MART
Those who visit or live in Japan usually develop a preference for their favourite konbini chain and for me it’s Family Mart. They seem to have the highest overall quality of food with a slightly nicer interior than say 7-Eleven and prices are almost the same. I had high hopes for their coffee after a knowledgeable local recommended it to me. Their machine is easy to use and grinds fresh beans, making a cup in about 60 seconds. Family Mart is also most likely of the chains to have seating which can be a big problem in Japan. A secondary benefit of this is that there are no on-street garbage cans in Japan so if you have to take-out your cup, there is nowhere to throw it out if you’re not close to home. Carrying an empty coffee cup throughout the day in your bag or purse is gross.
Unfortunately the coffee at Family Mart is pretty bad. If you’ve had McDonald’s coffee in Canada (much better than the McDonald’s coffee in the US) it’s very similar. I always order lattes to start because they’re usually safer if the coffee itself is terrible. There is a slightly burnt taste to their beans and they definitely aren’t fresh. Combined with relatively processed-tasting milk and generally too little coffee ratio, this cup was unpleasant, slightly sour, yet also totally forgettable. I dumped it out in the helpfully provided liquid drain! Evidently there is a double espresso option somewhere on the machine which might have improved it a few points. 3/10.
LAWSON
Lawson is my 2nd favourite konbini. Not as high quality food as Family Mart, but still better than 7-Eleven, and they often have little Muji stores inside so that can be handy. The coffee machine at Lawson is not as intuitive as Family Mart and the touch screen defaults to Japanese. There’s an English button if you look hard.
Same as at Family Mart, you can see the beans and hear them being ground, the milk looks a bit shiny coming out and it takes about 60 seconds to get a cup. There is noticeably more coffee in the Lawson cup than the Family Mart cup which does help. Overall the taste was marginally better. It didn’t have the sourness of Family Mart, however the milk tasted much more like artificial creamer. Overall was this a better cup of coffee? Yes. But it was still quite artificial tasting. 4/10.
7-ELEVEN
It’s amazing that there are 3 different automated coffee machines on the market and I wonder if their slight outward differences are just masking the same technology inside. The 7-Eleven machine has 2 places for choosing where to put your cup based on what type of beverage you want. This was a little confusing to figure out and judging from the plethora of warning labels, this machine is the least user friendly of the three. You can hear the coffee beans being ground and then an odd-looking milk substance comes out for what seems like too long. Finally at the end, for maybe 10% of the pour time, came a coffee-like liquid. I note this because there is a real mismatch between how much coffee apparently went in and how much coffee taste ends up in the cup.
On first taste, I liked the 7-Eleven coffee the best out of the three. It was the most balanced and “coffee-tasting” of the bunch. This was surprising given it didn’t look like there was any actual coffee in the cup. As I drank the cup, I started to notice a very unpleasant plasticky taste which seemed connected with the coffee taste. My hunch is that there is some kind of concentrated coffee flavour that they add to the beans to save money that is carrying the taste of the bag or the machine or the chemical it is made of. It could also have been in the milk, but my gut says it is in the coffee. Overall, while initially the best experience it ended up tasting the worst. 2/10.
CONCLUSION
If you’re looking for a latte, the konbini is not the place for you. Maybe the pure coffee is better. I don’t know and I don’t want to find out. I was a bit disappointed because there is definitely the technology to make a perfect cup with an automated commercial machine. Given the cost of all these cups was only 180 yen ($1.50USD) it seems to be the case that they are not using good ingredients. I’d prefer to pay 250 yen and get real milk and more coffee. The profit margin would still be the same. Which way to go next in search of my neighbourhood coffee oasis? I’m considering re-buying my aeropress and grinder setup, or I may try all the local mid-tier coffee shops next.
PRICE
$1.50 USD per person
AVAILABILITY
Every street corner in Japan.
THE RATING
2/10 Absolute
2/10 Relative
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