YO! Sushi was founded in 1997, by British entrepreneur Simon Woodroffe.[3][4] The current owner is Zensho Holdings, with royalties paid to YO! Company. YO! Sushi opened its first restaurant in Soho, London in January 1997.[5] A second restaurant followed opening in Harvey Nichols.
In 2000, Robin Rowland became CEO, and in 2002, YO! Sushi opened their first restaurant outside London, in Manchester's Selfridges. By 2003, the company had twelve restaurants open, and the first franchise opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
In April 2003, one scene from the movie Johnny English takes place in a restaurant of YO! Sushi. Johnny English gets his tie stuck in the conveyor belt. Two new franchises opened in 2007, one in Dublin, the other in Moscow. In April 2010, they opened their fiftieth company owned restaurant in Market Place, London.
In 2008, they became the first catering group to adopt the Food Standards Agency's traffic light colour coding system, which allows customers to see nutritional information about the food they are eating.[6]
From 1 September 2009, the YO! Sushi in Whiteleys Shopping Centre launched its takeaway and delivery services, allowing customers to go into the restaurant and order their food or order online to get food delivered to their homes.[7]
By June 2014, the company had more than seventy restaurants.[3] In October 2016, the company opened its first American stand alone restaurant in Boston, Massachusetts, and a few months later, in the Flatiron District in Manhattan, in March 2017.[8] The company had five restaurants in North America, but all of them have since closed.
Restaurants
YO! Sushi specialises in delivering sushi to customers using the Japanese style 'kaiten' conveyor belt method.[9][10][11] In each restaurant various sushi dishes and other Japanese cooked foods are prepared in a theater style kitchen in plain view of customers and then set on the thin conveyor belt.[11]
The belt carries food around the restaurant in a circuit, allowing diners to pick any dish from the belt.[9]
The company's headquarters is on Farringdon Road, London, United Kingdom. The company offer a menu with 19 vegan items.[15] At the PETA Vegan Food Awards 2015, the company's Tofu Katsu Curry won in the category Best Vegan Curry.[16] The restaurant also provides classes in making sushi.[17]
In August 2020, Yo! Sushi announced that it will shut 19 of its restaurants and cut up to 250 jobs as part of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) restructuring process.[18]
Environmental record
In November 2015, the Marine Conservation Society rated restaurants on the sustainability of their seafood. YO! Sushi served more species of seafood than the other chains surveyed, and still received a rating of 4.1 out of 5.0 which was among the highest ratings.[19]
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