7-11 come karaoke

Japanese convenience stores are adjusting, as profit seeking businesses are wont to do, to the new demographics;

FamilyMart is experimenting with over 30 combination outlets that share space with drug stores through a tie-up with Saitama Prefecture-based Drug Ace and Osaka’s Higuchi Yakkyoku drug store chains.

“We’ve even opened a combination store with a karaoke box in the Kamata district” of Tokyo, said [Family Mart manager Shinsuke] Otsuki. “This may prove a senior-targeting outlet because many senior customers come here in the daytime to practice singing.”

Family Mart is one of the three biggest convenience store operators in the country, behind, of course, 7-11. Which is also changing with the customers;

In fiscal 1989, people aged 29 and younger at 7-Eleven convenience stores accounted for 63 percent of daily customers. That declined to about 29 percent in fiscal 2013, according to recent statistics from Seven & i Holdings Co.

Customers 50 or older, who previously represented only 9 percent of all customers, rose to 30 percent in the same period, representing the age bracket with the largest share, according to the statistics.

In addition to changing the products they carry, now they'll even deliver them.