How a colorless macaron uses flavor to connect everyday shoppers with sustainability

The H2O Retailing Corporation runs Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores, supermarkets, and shopping centers across the Kansai region, with food sitting at the heart of its operations. Through its long running “Shokutowa” initiative, the group turns store vegetable scraps into compost while upcycling surplus produce and household food waste. These efforts have built a relationship of trust with local residents and producers. Yet regulars still expressed little interest in sustainability and remained disengaged with the confronting issues within systems of sustainability. This inspired the project to focus on reaching a new approach to social movements and social engagement.

To bridge that gap, H2O partnered with Loftwork to turn FabCafe Osaka into an experimental test kitchen to examine food systems from new perspectives of value creation. Rather than simply discussing sustainability, the team set out to craft an experience with immediate appeal, creating a concept that H2O could eventually introduce across its own retail spaces.

At the center of this collaboration was a monotone macaron with a visual blank slate, inviting people to experience flavor purely through aroma and memory. FabCafe Osaka has always created food and drink that speak for themselves, and this project brought that intuitive philosophy out from behind the cafe counter and straight into a major retailer’s sustainability mission.

Ask most people to picture a macaron, and they will likely imagine vivid colors and delicate decoration. We have grown used to choosing food and anticipating its taste with our eyes first.

Silmé, the team’s new macaron, intentionally disrupts that instinct. It taps into personal memories before a single word is spoken. By removing all color, visual bias fades away, allowing scent, the sense most deeply tied to memory and emotion, to guide the experience.

Although many people might agree with the criticisms of food systems, there are very few people or communities who actually are able to change their routines to create a significant impact. However, this is a common issue for anyone working to create sustainable systems. With H2O facing this exact challenge, they found it difficult to attract indifferent shoppers and keep them engaged over time.

To inspire genuine action, the team knew they first had to spark curiosity through an approach focused on sensorially driven products that could also assist in storytelling. They designed a tasting experience that translates complex environmental issues into direct tastes and aromas.

Throughout the development process, the team hosted regular dialogue sessions. Loftwork and H2O collaborated closely with a pastry chef, scent designers, and other specialists to bring these concepts to life. By delving into the cultural roots and history of food, the collaborators challenged one conventional assumption after another about how we eat and why.

In developing a macaron conceived as a new symbol of food, the team chose a sense of place as its central theme. They selected three deeply meaningful areas along the Hankyu Railway line within Shokutowa’s operational footprint, namely Kawanishi, Takarazuka, and Umeda. Each macaron was paired with the defining historical era of its respective location. Rather than simply replicating regional specialties or local produce, the design translated the intangible essence of each place into layered tastes and aromas. Through this approach, the project aimed to give food deeper meaning, turning the act of eating into an opportunity to inspire fresh perspectives and genuine surprise.

To validate the prototypes, the team hosted an interactive tasting session where thirty participants came together for a dialogue-driven food experience. Rather than learning about the regions through dry facts, this approach invited participants into an embodied sensory experience of aroma and taste, revealing just how much information exists within the act of eating. By capturing the participants’ genuine shifts in perception and candid reactions on the spot, the event served as a vital R&D milestone in preparing this future food concept for real-world implementation.

Participants walked away with a fundamentally new perspective. “I was surprised by how much information exists within the simple act of eating,” one noted. Another reflected, “It made me realize how mindlessly I usually consume food. Shifting between eating on autopilot and truly paying attention is a rich experience on its own.”

These reactions confirmed the exact shift the team had worked toward, proving that when people perceive more depth in every bite, their mindset begins to evolve. The feedback from the July tasting indicates that an unexpected entry point can transform routine shopping into a conscious choice, and that enough of those intentional moments can eventually spark a wider movement.

Written and edited by: Itsuha Hayama (loftwork.com editorial team)
Translated by: Pinhua Chen