Gaia Series 8: "Oisix La Daichi" Challenges The New Table Revolution

This week, the spotlight is on Oisix, a grocery delivery service which produces meal kits, comprising ingredients to make easy and tasty meals. It is very concerned about food wastage, with tonnes of food and ingredients which are still edible being thrown away by companies every year. So in line with its sustainability efforts, it also seeks to “upcycle” them to make delicious meals.

The person who started Oisix Ra Daichi Inc is CEO Kohei Takashima. Its headquarters are located in Osaki, Tokyo, while its distribution centre is in Ebina City, Kanagawa. Each day, it receives vegetables and fruits from 4,000 contract farmers all over the country. From here, they are shipped out to customers nationwide.

Oisix’s test kitchen is situated in its headquarters. Sawako Morita is in charge of creating new recipes for the company since it started 10 years ago. One of Oisix’s most popular items is ground meat and vegetable bibimbap. It has also collaborated with many well-known food experts and chefs. Every season, the company comes up with a special dish. For example, one spring, it created cherry salmon and green peas rice. Oisix sells its meal kits in supermarkets such as Life and Queen's Isetan too. A total of 140 million meals have been sold. 

Ms Yuri Sato buys fruits and vegetables for Oisix. She visits Tsunan Town in Niigata Prefecture, where Yukishita Ninjin carrots - a top seller of Oisix - are grown. She notices that carrots which do not look “perfect” are thrown away. Since Oisix is big on sustainability, she decides to buy the discarded carrots. Next, she heads to Hanno City in Saitama Prefecture. Here, she visits the Odaira Kinoko Laboratory, which has maitake mushrooms, another popular item of Oisix. Its president Yoichi Odaira gives Ms Sato a tour and she sees that the stems of the mushrooms are thrown away during the cutting process. A tonne of maitake stems is discarded each day and Ms Sato chooses to buy them too. 

Ms Sato later hands over the maitake stems to Ms Morita, who creates different recipes with them at the Oisix test kitchen. For example, she wraps them in pork loin but it takes too long to cook; Oisix kit meals must be prepared within 20 minutes. She then tries making egg rolls with the stems and bell peppers but the maitake’s aroma is overpowered by the vegetables. She also attempts to coat the maitake stems and pork loin with beaten eggs and breadcrumbs, after which they are fried. She often collects feedback on her recipes, while taking into account sustainability, deliciousness and cost. She finally replaces the pork loin with chicken breast, which is low cost and healthy. She also uses potato starch instead of breadcrumbs to save costs. She places the chicken and maitake stems on top of rice and tops it off with a soft-boiled egg and the result is a delicious, healthy and low-cost mushroom rice bowl. 

Oisix sells over 60 kinds of products which have been “upcycled” from ingredients which were thrown away. They include snacks such as dried daikon leaves, chips made from thinly sliced apple cores and pound cakes made from irregularly shaped navel oranges. These upcycled products are developed by Oisix’s Green Strategies Office, whose team leader is Ms Sonoko Toukairin.

Many companies are concerned about food wastage and a few of them have collaborated with Oisix. An example is the famous Choya Umeshu, which makes plum wine. Its plum wine is 100 per cent made out of domestically grown plums and more than eight million litres are produced each year. Ms Toukairin visits Kishu in Wakayama Prefecture, where the plums are grown by farmers and steeped to make the wine. Each year, the company is left with 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes of steeped plums which are then disposed of.

Ms Toukairin has worked with local agricultural cooperatives also. She collaborated with the JA Kinan Fruits Factory in Kamitonda Town, Wakayama, for example. Here, dried fruit made from plums is produced. A machine removes the seed from the plums, but a hurdle they had to overcome was to remove the alcohol from the plums which were previously steeped for a long time. After researching for six months, they came up with the idea of putting the plums in a pressure cooker and changing the time and temperature. A sugar solution is added and the plums are taken out after a few hours, after which they are dried for the whole day. 

Pronto, a cafe chain with 180 stores nationwide, is another company that has worked with Oisix. Its stores produce 750 tonnes of coffee grounds each year and the company thought of reusing them. So Ms Toukairin collaborated with a food processing plant in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, which makes rice crackers. The coffee grounds are kneaded into the glutinous rice to make a dough and then mixed evenly using a unique technology used by the factory. It is then slowly cooked, after which the glutinous rice is coated with chocolate. 

The chocolate rice cracker made from Pronto’s coffee grounds and the dried fruit made from plum wine are among the items sold at a speciality store in Shibuya, Tokyo. It sells upcycled products from various companies. Ms Toukairin continues to collaborate with companies and manufacturers to develop new upcycled items. In addition, Oisix has also worked with Shidax Food Service, which provides meals for places like company cafeterias, hospitals and nursing homes. A team from Oisix visited a private nursing home in Suginami City, Tokyo. Shidax provides meals daily to the nursing home and wants to expand its menu. Oisix suggests that the company consider its meal kits as another option. 

Tips:

1)    Try Oisix’s convenient and delicious meal kits when you want a quick meal
2)    “Upcycled” foods from discarded ingredients which are still edible make delicious snacks