Historically, international beer companies have faced some difficult challenges in Japan, especially when it comes to getting distribution in restaurants, pubs and clubs. Oftentimes local proprietors receive very strong incentives (cash!) to stock the brews of just one Japanese company or distributor, and that means that the door can be slammed shut on international brands—and other Japanese brands—right from the start.
Things can be rough even if a bar or restaurant is open to the idea of serving competing beers. International brands have to go head to head with Japanese companies offering a multitude of excellent brews, to say nothing of fighting it out with other world players.
What's a foreign company to do?
Perhaps take inspiration from Heineken Japan, which has come up with an interesting new approach that may give it an edge. Instead of focusing its pitch on typical features like quality ingredients or brand appeal—areas where the company has little competitive advantage in Japan—Heineken is now staking out ground in territory that it can essentially own (at least for the short term). That area is "extra cold" beer.
According to Heineken, its beer is unique. While other brews are best served at between five and seven degrees Celsius, Heineken's aroma and flavor reach their peak at more frigid temperatures. As a result the company has introduced a special beer server system to back up the claim. The device not only supercools the beer, it's been designed to appeal directly to servers and customers through a steel draft spigot that ices up with an impressive layer of frost. If you walked into a bar looking for a nice cool beer I'm willing to bet you'd be mighty tempted to order a mug full of suds coming from that tap.
All in all, this is great way to generate buzz in a market that loves distinctive product features, especially those with a technical bent. With luck, the "extra cold" angle will help Heineken recover from poor performance last year when sales in Japan were apparently down some 15%.
But there is one catch. Heineken isn't providing the devices for free. Any establishment that wants to sell Heineken Extra Cold is going to have to shell out $5,000 to pay for the machine. Unfortunately, that's the kind of disincentive that can take bar and restaurant operator enthusiasm and put it right into a deep freeze.
*If you're interested in trying an Heineken Extra Cold, it's now available at Rigoletto Bar and Grill in Roppongi Hills (Tel：03－6438－0071).
