THE JAPAN NEWS



 

Major Japanese convenience store operator FamilyMart Co. announced Monday that 787 of its 14,600 affiliated stores nationwide — roughly 5% — will implement shorter business hours beginning June 1.

Of those stores, nearly 70%, or 514, operate on a truncated schedule every day, while the remaining 273 stores only shorten business hours on Sundays. The closing time is decided in units of 30 minutes between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. in each store. FamilyMart has not disclosed the names of its time-saving stores, but there is little regional difference among them.

As for the reasons behind the shortened hours, 57.5% of the stores cited a “labor shortage,” while others claimed “having few nighttime visitors” (18.9%) and others “to improve the work environment” (16.1%).