Inbound and the Non-Alcoholic — Weaving the Crossroads of Food and Travel

Do not read "food" and "travel" as separate stories

Inbound tourism, and the non-alcoholic beverage market. These two have, until now, most often been spoken of in separate contexts. Travel as the affair of the Tourism Agency, local governments, and the lodging industry; the non-alcoholic as the affair of food manufacturers and the food-and-beverage industry.

Sun&R.Lab has chosen to lay these two on the same plane and read them together. In the Japan Tourism Agency's "Consumption Trend Survey for Foreign Visitors to Japan", Q1 2025, experiential consumption by visitors to Japan continues to gain depth, and interest in "an experience obtainable only in Japan" is beginning to be observed as steady demand. The non-alcoholic beverage market, meanwhile — in Suntory's June 2024 survey and in IMARC Group's market forecast alike — is confirmed to have entered a period of qualitative transition. From "cannot drink" to "actively choosing not to drink".

Read side by side, these two reveal a crossroads. Among inbound guests, a certain proportion do not consume alcohol for religious, cultural, or health reasons. Whether we can offer even them "an experience obtainable only in Japan" without presupposing alcohol — this is the question placed at the crossroads of food and travel. This entry is written as a note on the strategy: how Sun&R.Lab means to weave this crossroads.

Why it is precisely to "those who do not drink" that we wish to deliver Japan's terroir experience

Many operators handling non-alcoholic drinks have designed their products as "a substitute for those who can drink". Those advised by a medical check-up to give the liver a day off, those who are driving, those who are pregnant. There is a history in which the non-alcoholic has been treated as an alternative proposal for these "those who do not drink because they cannot".

Yet seen in the inbound context, another landscape rises up. Those who, for religious reasons, take no alcohol their whole lives (parts of the Muslim world, of the Hindu world, and others); those who keep a cultural distance from alcohol; those who, health-conscious, actively restrain their alcohol intake. They do not drink not "because they cannot", but "by active choice".

Whether we can deliver Japan's terroir to these guests without presupposing alcohol. This, we observe, is a question that directly governs the quality of the travel experience. For one who does not enjoy alcohol, a night at a starred restaurant where the only options are "juice or a soft drink" and a night that holds a non-alcoholic pairing carrying the story of its region are two evenings whose memory differs entirely in saturation.

That Sun&R.Lab places the center of gravity of its business on the non-alcoholic is not only a matter of market size. To deliver Japan's terroir experience, in the context of inbound tourism, precisely to those who actively do not drink — because we wish to weave that kind of business is the reason nearest the essence.

A three-layer strategy — connecting region, kitchen, and table

To weave the crossroads of inbound and the non-alcoholic, we believe three layers must be designed at once.

First layer: letting the region's story dwell in the product

At the core of visitors' experiential consumption lie "the local", "the authentic", and "the presence of story". GI-registered budō sanshō (grape peppercorn), heirloom tea leaves grown in deep-snow country, yuzu grown at the crossing of the Pacific side and the mountain interior. To translate these stories into the form of a non-alcoholic drink, and seal them within the bottle. This is the work of the first layer. It is also the area the Maison Brand business (NEIGE & THÉ) carries centrally.

Second layer: recomposing it as experience in kitchen and at table

To take a product in which the region's story dwells and recompose it, in the kitchens of starred restaurants, luxury auberges, and five-star hotels, as a course experience. To design the five-axis pairing with the sensibility of cook and sommelier. To give the explanation to guests with the same precision as one speaks of wine. This is the work of the second layer. It is the area the Non-Alcohol Agency business hopes to support, in the form of co-creation with venues.

Third layer: carrying the memory of the journey to the home table

Not to let it end with one evening's experience, but to build a structure by which it can be carried home, bottle by bottle, to the family table. Reordering on an e-commerce site, expansion as a gift, export overseas. A single dinner connects to months of memory at the home table. This is the work of the third layer. It is the area the Maison Brand and Agency, in coordination, hope to implement little by little from here.

The three layers hold meaning not by moving separately, but by rising together at once. The region alone does not make a product. The kitchen alone does not make a memory. The table alone does not make circulation. Only when the three resonate within a single glass does the structure by which "Japan's terroir experience" reaches inbound guests first come into being.

Collaboration with local governments and regional administration

The strategy of inbound and the non-alcoholic is not a matter Sun&R.Lab completes on its own. A region's producer network, a local government's tourism promotion, a tourism association's promotion — only in collaboration with these does the three-layer structure rise up.

As can be seen in the Digital Agency's "DX Promotion Plan for Local Governments", co-creation with external specialist operators is becoming an important theme in the tourism and regional-branding domains of local government. Sun&R.Lab hopes, as one such co-creation partner, to build up dialogue with local governments and tourism associations as well.

To integrate the story of a region's producers into NEIGE & THÉ's recipes, and to deploy those products at luxury hospitality facilities within the region. At the same time, to fold them into a local government's tourism promotion and into experiential content aimed overseas. This can become a structural initiative that raises the brand value of a region as a whole. In the course of Discovery, we hope to weave this kind of dialogue little by little from here.

The relationship to the three businesses — inbound as a cross-cutting theme

The strategy of inbound and the non-alcoholic bears on all three of Sun&R.Lab's businesses, cutting across them.

In the Maison Brand business, inbound directly extends the reach of product design. Halal accommodation, multilingual allergen labeling, packaging design as a gift. We hope to build into the premise of the product a structure that reaches all the way to overseas buyers and the homes of visitors to Japan.

In the Non-Alcohol Agency business, inbound is an important theme of accompaniment. We will provide the inbound response of venues and lodging facilities (multilingual menus, pairing explanations, social-media operation) as one of the five areas of support. Whether the depth of experiential consumption shown by the Japan Tourism Agency's Q1 2025 survey can be taken up in the field of the venue is entering a phase where it directly governs the value of the Agency business.

In the BizDev business, inbound bears on the work from another angle. Among logistics-industry DX engagements, for instance, the distribution design and inventory management of experiential products aimed at visitors to Japan is sometimes included. Or, as a new business for a luxury brand, a concierge service aimed at visitors to Japan is sometimes discussed. We are beginning to observe the possibility that the methodology Sun&R.Lab is honing in the non-alcoholic will be used, in changed form, in these BizDev fields.

Global expansion, another North Star

The inbound strategy connects, in the end, to another North Star: "to deliver Japan's terroir as a companion to the tables of the world".

In Sun&R.Lab's ROADMAP, we position FY27 H1 as the "World Bridge Phase", the period of the full launch of overseas expansion. Luxury hotels in the Middle East, Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe and the Americas, the emerging affluent markets of Asia — to establish the brand in these fields, local partners will, we hold, always be necessary. For now we are still in the course of the domestic Discovery phase, and overseas is a North Star held up in the distance; but we are at the stage of beginning our preparations toward that quarter.

Inbound (visitors experiencing Japan within Japan) and global expansion (Japan's terroir spoken of overseas) are strategies structurally connected. One who experiences NEIGE & THÉ during a visit to Japan orders it again by e-commerce after returning home. An overseas buyer, during a visit to Japan, encounters Japan's terroir in the field of Japanese hospitality. One evening's experience continues into a long-term relationship — such a structure of circulation is what we hope to weave.

The "choice not to drink" shows the world anew

Finally, we would like to pull the field of view back once more.

What comes into view through the lens of the non-alcoholic is, in all likelihood, not only the possibility of the non-alcoholic market itself. How Japan's food and travel will be positioned within the tables of the world from here — it is also, we hypothesize, another entrance onto that horizon.

The region weaves the story of its land into a single mouthful. The kitchen recomposes that story into one evening's experience. The table carries that experience home as the memory of a journey. At the home table, the story sprouts once more. And inbound guests reproduce, at their own tables in their own countries, the glass they met in Japan.

The choice not to drink shows the world anew — believing so, Sun&R.Lab weaves, now, in the course of Discovery.

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In the next entry, we return to the origin and write about the posture in which we weave our business as an organization in the Discovery phase.