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The Yomiuri Shimbun Frozen meals, such as rice gratin with beef demi-glace sauce, sell well.
By Hanako Abe / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
11:00 JST, January 20, 2025
YOKOHAMA — Hotel New Grand, which opened in Yokohama in the early Showa era (1926-1989), has recently been putting effort into developing new products such as frozen meals.
After a sharp drop in the number of guests due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel developed the products to allow people to enjoy its luxurious gourmet offerings at home. With a shop selling its products having opened near the hotel this spring, Hotel New Grand has taken up a new challenge to go along with its traditional accommodation business.
First ever emergency shutdown
The hotel was established as a symbol of the reconstruction of Yokohama after the city was devastated by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The hotel, which overlooks the Port of Yokohama and Yamashita Park, has served as an international guesthouse that has welcomed many foreign guests and celebrities.
The pandemic led to the hotel’s first ever emergency shutdown in its nearly 100 years of history. In the spring of 2020, the hotel was forced to close its doors for a month. Hitomi Yokoyama, 46, a public relations official at the hotel, said, “A hotel is supposed to be a place where people interact with each other 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But during that time, this place which is meant to have guests felt very dark and lonely.” There were months during the pandemic when the hotel’s occupancy rate dropped below 10%, according to Yokoyama.
Precisely reproducing the original tastes
However, the pandemic gave the hotel staff some unexpected free time.
Some Western-style dishes regularly served in Japan, such as rice gratin and Napolitan spaghetti, originated here at Hotel New Grand. The hotel was already working on developing frozen versions of its specialty meals so that people could enjoy the tastes of these traditional dishes at home, and the project made significant progress during the pandemic.
Until then, the hotel’s recipes had been passed on based on the chefs’ taste and through such vague expressions as “enough sliced onions to fill a square tray.” Counter to this tradition, the hotel’s sixth grand chef, Shinji Sekiguchi, 59, has been trying to pave the way for these recipes to be handed down to future generations by keeping precise records of the amounts of ingredients and seasonings used to make them. His recipes were useful in developing frozen meals to be mass-produced.
The Yomiuri Shimbun Grand chef Shinji Sekiguchi, right, and assistant general manager Kenichiro Yaguchi talk about the development of frozen meals at the S.Weil by Hotel New Grand shop in Yokohama.
The hotel staff were able to spend a lot of time creating trial products for commercialization. In 2021, the hotel sold seafood rice gratin online for ¥2,376 including tax. At a time when demand from people cooped up at home was high, the product sold very well. Since then, the hotel has developed new products one after another and now sells 11 kinds of frozen meals. Kenichiro Yaguchi, 55, assistant general manager of the hotel, said delightedly, “Our new attempt happened to coincide with the pandemic and resonated with the customers’ needs.”
New shop opens
The Yomiuri Shimbun The hotel’s shop “S.Weil by Hotel New Grand” features a stately interior design.
In 2024, a shop called “S.Weil by Hotel New Grand” opened a minute’s walk away from the hotel. The shop is named after the hotel’s first grand chef, Sally Weil, who made a major contribution to the development of Western foods in Japan.
The stately design of the shop’s interior was influenced by the appearance of the hotel’s main building, which has been designated as a historical monument by the Yokohama municipal government. As well as frozen meals, the shop also sells products such as sweets, bread, coffee, totaling about 100 types of foods and drinks. Some are sold under the “S.Weil” brand.
In fiscal 2019, before the pandemic, the hotel sold about ¥20 million worth of products. In fiscal 2024, sales were about ¥120 million, a sixfold increase. Yaguchi said, “Long-established hotels tend to be conservative, but we learned the importance of taking on new challenges from the pandemic. We would like to continue to aim for further growth going forward.”
A strong market
Frozen meals gained attention due to demand from people stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the frozen meal market has remained strong as freezing technology has improved.
According to an online survey conducted by the Tokyo-based Japan Frozen Food Association in February 2024, 22.9% of respondents said they used frozen meals more often than a year earlier, well above the 6.6% who said they used frozen meals less often than a year earlier.
A survey by the Tokyo-based research company Fuji Keizai Co. found that the domestic frozen food market has been revenue of ¥1.2 trillion a year since 2022. In 2024, it was expected to reach ¥1.3429 trillion. For household use, frozen meals comprising stable grains, main and side dishes, as well as products created with the supervision of famous chefs, have been selling well. “Since frozen meals help reduce cooking time and are easy to prepare, the market likely will continue to grow in the future,” an official at the company said.
