Conveyor belt sushi (kaitenzushi)
Kaitenzushi (sushi en cinta transportadora)
- Date
- 1958 · confidence high
- Place
- Higashiosaka, Osaka, Japan
- Credited to
- Yoshiaki Shiraishi
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
A sushi restaurant format in which dishes circulate around the room on a conveyor belt, and customers take what they fancy and pay according to the number and type of plates eaten. Shiraishi devised it after watching brewery conveyor belts, to serve sushi quickly and cheaply.
Yoshiaki Shiraishi opened the first such restaurant, Genroku Sushi, in 1958, after several years developing the conveyor mechanism.
What it led to
- expansion of the low-cost restaurant format across Japan
- international 'sushi train' chains in Australasia and the West
- variants using miniature boats or trains to serve the dishes