Kitchen equipment piles up as pandemic shutters Japan's restaurants

A worker cleans a second-hand kitchen item at Tenpos Busters's reuse center in Yokohama, Japan, December 17, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) - A truck laden with kitchen sinks, cutlery, pots and pans pulls up to a warehouse in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, and workers begin to unload the goods taken from shuttered restaurants - victims of the COVID-19 pandemic-driven slump.

The facility, run by second-hand kitchen equipment supplier Tenpos Busters, is so full that a sink has to be left outside. "We are buying more items, so our centres for maintenance across the country are operating at a full capacity to clean and repair them," Takahito Tooyama, sales division director at Tenpos Busters, told Reuters.