Soy sauce is an all-purpose seasoning. This perception has caused Japanese soy sauce to suffer. Originally, there are five different types of soy sauce. Like there is a pairing between wine and food, there is a pairing between soy sauce and food, too. However, people are not familiar with this fact and therefore they tended to use only one type of soy sauce for any dish. This has led to a decline in the number of soy sauce makers from 6000 to 1200 over the past 50 years. An idea to maintain the diversity of soy sauce was needed.

We developed a new brand called “Favorite Food Soy Sauce" to introduce people the enjoyment of soy sauce pairing. The sleeve-type package has illustrations of Japanese people's favorite foods, allowing people to intuitively choose their preferable soy sauce. If you remove the sleeve after purchase, you can find out each brand's name, which leads to nomination buying.

Shokunin-Shoyu is a retail brand of soy sauce from all over Japan. Utilizing this product, we have developed a new brand called ”Favorite Food Soy Sauce". We researched Japanese people's popular favorite foods and assorted the best pairing soy sauce for each of them. Finally, we developed 24 types of sleeve-type package which only has the illustration of the favorite food.

The sleeve-type paper package is developed uniquely. Materials were supplied by the printing company that handled the production of the package.

The products were launched in May 2020. They are sold... 1. online on the company's own e-commerce site / 2. at directly-managed stores of Shokunin-shoyu / 3. at more than 30 department stores and select stores throughout Japan

Production scale: (approx.) 20,000 per year / Production cost: (approx.) $0.17 per package / Retail price: (approx.) $4.24 per bottle

1. Over 17,000 bottles were sold in 10 months.

2. Many people posted dishes using “Favorite Food Soy Sauce” on SNS.

3 .Shokunin-shoyu SNS followers increased by 8 times.

4. Wholesale distribution were expanded nationwide, resulting in a 2.4 times increase in sales per store.

5. Favorite Food Soy Sauce contributed to a 308% increase in sales, driving a V-shaped recovery of Shokunin-Shoyu, which had been struggling due to COVID-19.

6. Started to expand “Favorite Food Soy Sauce” for overseas with illustration replaced with favorite food of each country.

7. Started to expand the idea to other seasonings as “Favorite Food Series.”