Female college students take pictures of Kyo no Ocha Parfait green tea-based dessert with a smartphone at Kyoto’s Sakyo Ward.
KYOTO, May 26 – The Kyoto prefectural headquarters of National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (ZEN-NOH) has collaborated with female college students in the Kansai area to develop photogenic green tea-flavored sweets, which are put on sale at its restaurant Minoru Shokudo located inside Takashimaya department store in Kyoto.
Seven types of desserts, including a parfait and a custard pudding using green tea produced by a local agricultural cooperative JA Kyoto Yamashiro, are created and sold until July to appeal to young women who like to post photos on social media.
Team KJ, a group of female college students in Kansai who collaborate with companies on product development, helped create the desserts for the tea-infused sweets campaign held at Minoru Shokudo starting on May 17.
“Young women often use Instagram to search for restaurants,” says Yuna Ishizumi, a 21-year-old third-year student of Kansai University who heads Team KJ. “Being Instagrammable is important to appeal to young women.”
The best featured product is Kyo no Ocha Parfait, priced at 1,080 yen, with layers of whipped cream, jelly made from locally produced matcha green tea powder and roasted green tea, rice puffs made of locally-grown rice, as well as three flavors of gelato – matcha, roasted green tea and milk produced in the Miyama district of the city of Nantan in Kyoto.