Selling Homemade lunch packets to friends. Legal or Illegal?

22 comments

1. If you profit over 200,000 yen you must report your earnings and pay taxes on them. There are also liabilities because you are unlicensed and uninsured… If somebody gets sick from the food you make it might cause a few problems. You’re also on a student visa, I don’t think it allows you to start your own “business”… 

2. Sounds about as illegal as giving haircuts to your fellow students: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/06/b05dc4fef6ee-vietnamese-in-tokyo-arrested-over-illegal-haircuts-to-thousands.html

3. If it’s a business venture then you should go through the steps to legitimize it, know the rules and regulations for the type of business you’re running, and keep a record of all of your sales/expenses for taxes. I’m not saying that it’s not possible to do this under the radar, just saying you should follow the rules while you’re in japan. Also I hope you enjoy your time in uni

4. 🙄

5. We had a student do this at the school I worked at. It became a huge thing, since she was selling in the school without a license to handle food, and if someone got sick, it would be on the school since it happened here.

   Terrible times for everyone involved.

6. You are only going to get in trouble if local bento businesses take notice and complain to the authorities. So it’s a question of scale.

   Selling <10 lunchboxes a day to friends is one thing, selling >100 lunchboxes a day is another.

7. Illegal. The only question would be: is it at a scale worth prosecuting?

8. Sounds like your activity has the possibility of getting bigger and bigger.

   1. This type of business is illegal under a student visa

   2. Food preparation and sales needs a license which you don’t have which is also illegal

   3. If you are not reporting your profits and possibly paying taxes on it then that is also illegal (I believe if your profits are over ¥200,000 you have to report, but due to deductions, you wouldn’t have to pay anything until it’s more than ¥450,000? Not sure about that exactly)

   So if you try to rectify problem 3 you will be notifying the authorities that actually you are doing number 1 and 2 illegally

   No big deal unless this starts to become a bigger business.

9. I think by the time someone may or may not decide to snitch you, you may or may not get in trouble and jeopardize your status of residence and any visa renewals in the future. Is this profit worth the risk? Aren’t you allowed to work part time if you struggle with your expenses? If you are keen on staying here long term after you finish your studies or at some point in the future, I would recommend avoid doing anything illegal.

10. I would keep doing it. If I was ever caught, I would just say it was my first time doing it.

11. >Also, I may or may not be advertising it by posting little catchy posters on my instagram stories.

    I would stop that immediately because that is literally creating and publishing evidence.

12. Go to the local bar association and ask them about “hypotheticals”, see what they suggest.

13. Absolutely 100% do not post it online. And if you insist on advertising it online, I mean why would you do that? Why advertise the illegal thing you are doing? Especially something that is unsafe??

    But maybe they won’t care that you don’t have a license, Japan is pretty loose about not filling out the proper paperwork…?!?!!!!!

14. It’s not illegal but you may want to look into how to file taxes properly on the income.

15. Just don’t tell anyone?

16. You are making food. You need a food handling license. Yes, you can get in a lot of trouble if someone gets sick or the government / police ever hear of this.
    This can be ticket to leave Japan if ever found out.

17. If you do it, better not piss someone off. They will SNITCH

18. If no one gets poisoned and everyone is happy and giving you money in cash, you are very likely not going to get caught. Maybe, you shouldn’t stop.

19. Everything is legal until the government finds out.

20. I’m a former restaurant consultant who specialized in opening restaurants. I was going to write a long essay detailing everything illegal you are currently doing, but the other posters seem to have covered it well enough. The tax man is the least of your worries.

    Here is a lawyer giving advice about operating a restaurant(bento sales require a restaurant license) without proper licensing.

    https://j-mikata.com/contents/kaigyou-dokuritsu/808 . If you can’t read Japanese, use Google translate, it’s good enough to get the gist of it.

    Tl;dr- operating food service without a license is punishable by up to 2 years imprisonment and/or fines up to 2 million ¥.

    Also, since you are on a student visa, not only can you be deported, but a particularly petty prosecutor could charge you with illegal employment of foreigners.

    I would recommend you cease and desist immediately. At the very least, delete your social media ads. If you’re selling to a couple of friends, or a club you’re part of, it’s unlikely anyone cares.

    However, if you’re selling to the general public, you have an unfair advantage over legitimate businesses that had to go through the regulatory steps, and its only a matter of time before trouble finds you.

21. Very illegal. You’re handling food and making profit without the related licenses as a foreigner with a student visa… So many red flags there, so whatever you want to do next, you can start by getting rid of all the online and offline evidence, and decrease your customer base down to your inner circle of friends.

22. Bringing illegal third-world food prep to Japan. What could go wrong?