Family Mart convenience store softens its policies to welcome foreign workers

Since its merger with UNY in 2016, Family Mart operates about 17,000 convenience stores in Japan and is the second-largest convenience store chain in the country.

Convenience store chains extensively need sales clerks and this is no surprise that they experience as well Japan's labor shortage.

To welcome new part-time employees, the chain decided to get rid of an old policy that required its sales clerks to have black hair as, actually, the customers did not even care about it. The sanitary aspects (cleanliness and neat grooming) are kept the same as before, and vivid colors are still not encouraged.

The greetings are also included in this reform in order to ease the work of the workers who are not native speakers of Japanese. The formal greeting to thank a customer is now " ありがとうございます。" (arigatou gozaimasu, thank you very much) instead of "ありがとうございます。またお越しくださいませ" ( arigatougozaimasu, mata okoshi kudasaimase, thank you very much, please come again). 

If you are interested in coming to Japan and try your way as a combini sales clerk during you working holiday for exemple, please contact us!