We used to have Yakult Ladies in Singapore too — I remember my parents buying from them to please their kids (me) decades ago.

Surprisingly enough, I just looked the scheme up for this comment, and it's still active:

- https://yakult.com.sg/yakult-lady-agent/

- https://sg.news.yahoo.com/memory-makers-singapores-first-yak...

The Yahoo article could help explain some of the economics behind it.

How neat. I'd buy some Actimel too if a sharply dressed lady would show up at my door instead of a suicidal looking grocery delivery guy who carves the local word for "tip" in the elevator every time he doesn't get any.

The article didn't answer my main question, which is how the economics work. How does it add up to have high-touch home delivery of $5 yogurt packages?

I wonder how many suburban housewives in the 60's combated loneliness through TupperWare® Parties?

Another variation on this is La Poste in France have a paid service "Watch over my parents" where you can get the postie to do a short regular visit to them (presumably alongside any deliveries) for distant children who can't.

https://www.laposte.fr/services-seniors/visites-du-facteur

Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic' I can't help but wonder if we're not trying to solve the wrong problem.

Maybe the solution should not be sought in trying to increase social connections but in eliminating our need for social contact. This dependence on other humans has always felt like a flaw to me.

Note that I'm not saying that human contact is bad, just that our pathological dependency on it is.

This is an ad

Yakult is a Japanese company? I always assumed from the name it came from mainland Europe somewhere. They did a Häagen-Dazs on me. Especially as the Japanese often come up with Western names like this that aren't even spellable in kana.

English is not my main language but this title confuses me

With the automation of some customer service labor in japan, maybe this shows people value at least a bit of customer service interaction as a customer

Is this a PR piece, with product placement clearly front and center?

This seems to be a submarine article - all the images and quotes seem to be directly sourced from Yakult Honsha's strategic comms department.

Edit: yep, appears Yakult has just kicked off an ad campaign putting Yakult Ladies front and center [0]

[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8HNY7Ta4dA

“The yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Minnesota”

HN’s interest in this article is so “thing vs Japanese thing”

[flagged]

Sometimes news like this is upvoted, because it involves Japan, towards each a lot of Western techies have an unhealthy obsession on, but the moment when those techies are advised to not use the self-service thing at the super-market they start going bananas.

Japanese have lactose intolerance, almost universally.

They don't eat yogurt or dairy in general.