Yoshiaki Shiraishi – Inventor of “Kaitenzushi”

It took 10 years for Yoshiaki Shiraishi to develop the rotating sushi machine, better known in Japan as “Kaitenzushi”. However, an extra that its inventor was looking for was for everyone to eat delicious and cheap sushi since a typical sushi restaurant costs at least 5,000 yen (40 USD) on average per customer.

He thought that “even if the price of sushi is 1/10, if there are 10 times more customers, we can still make a profit.” If you have many customers and a valuable sushi chef can prepare them, “you can offer delicious sushi at a low price.”

Photo of Yoshiaki Shiraishi at his restaurant in Osaka. © Photo by Genroku Sangyo

Around 1958, the company “Mawaru Genroku Sushi No. 1 Store” of Genroku Sangyo Co., Ltd. opened the first Kaitenzushi in the city of Higashiosaka, where the sushi plates are placed on a rotating conveyor belt throughout the restaurant and going through each table.

Yoshiaki Shiraishi , owner of a sushi restaurant in Osaka where sushi was eaten while standing up, invented this Kaitenzushi restaurant with the aim of efficiently handling orders from a large number of customers at a low cost, taking inspiration from conveyor belts for production. of beer from the factories.

The automation of this conveyor belt made it possible for sushi chefs to serve many customers in a considerable time and by increasing the number of customers, not to mention that it helped to increase the consumption of sushi by offering it at an affordable price since it was previously considered a product for a luxury dinner.

Kaiten-zushi became popular among the labor sector and little by little also among families to go to one of these Kaitenzushi restaurants for lunch or dinner and pay more considerable prices for the family economy. These restaurants have become so popular that they have spread throughout the world.

To see what a Kaitenzushi is like, we invite you to watch our video