Sushiro Brand Guidelines: The Osaka Conveyor-Sushi Chain From Sushitaro to Times Square

A sushi shop in Abeno, then a chain with three names.

Sushiro’s story begins in Osaka. Japanese Wikipedia says its founder, Yoshio Shimizu, opened a sushi shop called Tai Sushi in the Abeno district in July 1975, and in June 1984 opened the first shop under the name Sushitaro; a company of that name followed in October 1984, based in Toyonaka, north of the city. His brother set up a second Sushitaro company in Suita in 1988, and the two merged in 1999. Time Out New York, reporting in May 2026, also dates the founding of the chain in Osaka to 1984.

The name changed along the way. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Sushitaro was too close to the name of a sushi-rice mix sold by the food maker Nagatanien, and the shops became “Sushiro,” written in katakana. For years several shop names ran side by side: Japanese Wikipedia says that in the mid-1990s branches traded as Sushiro in Hyogo, as Sushitaro north of Osaka city and as Akindo to the south, with little difference between them in menu or format. The company took the name Akindo Sushiro in December 2000, and by June 2009 every shop carried the single name Sushiro; “Akindo” now survives only in the company name.

Growth beyond the Kansai region came in the 2000s. Sushiro opened in Tokyo’s Katsushika ward and in Fussa in September 2001 and in Nagoya in July 2002, and listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in September 2003, Japanese Wikipedia says. With a shop in Izumo, Shimane, in September 2017, it had a branch in all 47 prefectures. The operating company, Akindo Sushiro, is based in Suita, Osaka.

Funds, a holding company and Food & Life.

Ownership has changed several times. Japanese Wikipedia records that in March 2007 a group of shareholders sold their stakes to the restaurant group Zensho, which became its principal shareholder; the management turned instead to the investment firm Unison Capital and the seafood company Kyokuyo, and a Unison-backed company bought the shares in a tender offer announced in September 2008. Sushiro left the stock market on 1 April 2009, and Zensho’s holding was paid out in the merger that followed. In September 2012 Unison sold its stake to a company linked to the British investment firm Permira.

A holding company, Sushiro Global Holdings, listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 30 March 2017. Later that year it agreed a capital tie-up with the rice dealer Shinmei and with the Genki Sushi chain, with a view to combining the businesses; the companies called the plan off on 18 June 2019, citing differences in brand strategy in Japan and in how they open shops abroad, according to Japanese Wikipedia. On 1 April 2021 the holding company was renamed FOOD & LIFE COMPANIES and, the same day, bought the sushi chain Kyotaru from Yoshinoya Holdings.

The restaurants follow the conveyor-belt format, with plates moving along a lane and orders placed on touch screens. Japanese Wikipedia notes that around 2015 Sushiro moved to push-button soy sauce dispensers and took the small soy dishes off its tables, a change other chains later copied. In July 2015 it introduced Dakko-zushi, a mascot family of animals each hugging a sushi topping, among them a sea otter holding tuna and a panda holding salmon roe; the characters appear on the website, on social media and on goods such as pass cases. During the Osaka–Kansai Expo, from April to October 2025, it ran a branch on the Expo site presented as a “future-style” Sushiro.

Counters, lanes and shop fronts.

Japan’s fast-food and conveyor-sushi chains present themselves first through the shop itself. A beef-bowl shop is often a single counter with stools, a curry or noodle shop a short line from order to tray, a sushi restaurant a lane of plates running past the tables. Many chains also run suburban roadside stores with car parks, table seating and drive-throughs, and units in station buildings and shopping-centre food courts, so the same name has to work on a tall roadside sign and on a narrow arcade front.

Ordering is part of the look. Many shops ask customers to buy a ticket from a machine before they sit down, and the machine’s screen, buttons and photographs become a menu in their own right; newer stores add self-checkout and mobile ordering. Conveyor-sushi chains add a piece of equipment of their own: the lane that carries plates past the seats.

Naming is usually plain. Signboards tend to state the dish as well as the name, and menus describe a bowl by what is on it, such as cheese, grated radish, kimchi or spring onion and egg, often in sizes from small to extra large. Some chains keep a word of their own for a familiar dish, and many publish their menus in English and Chinese for visitors.

Behind the shop front sits a listed company. Most of the large chains belong to parent groups listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange that run several formats under separate names, and their corporate sites publish company histories, store counts and overseas subsidiaries year by year. Those pages, read alongside Japanese and English press, are the clearest record of when a chain opened its first store, when it went abroad and who owns it now.

From Seoul in 2011 to Eighth Avenue.

Sushiro’s first overseas branch opened in Seoul in December 2011, Japanese Wikipedia says. Taipei followed on 15 June 2018 and Hong Kong, in Jordan, on 13 August 2019. English Wikipedia dates the first Singapore branch to August 2019, Bangkok to March 2021 and Jakarta to November 2023, with Guangzhou, the first branch in mainland China, opening on 22 September 2021 and the first Malaysian outlet on 7 February 2025. Time Out New York put the chain at more than 800 locations worldwide in May 2026; the company says it had 948 at the end of April 2026, across ten countries and regions.

In May 2026 Food & Life Companies announced its first restaurant in the United States, at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street by Times Square in Manhattan. Time Out New York reported on 12 May 2026 that it takes a three-storey, 9,000-square-foot space that once housed a McDonald’s, with about 150 seats and conveyor lanes on the two upper floors, ordering on large touchscreens and a private dining room and sushi bar on the lower level. The menu runs to more than 100 items, Time Out said, with ramen, somen noodle soup and steamed egg custard alongside sushi. SoraNews24 reported on 2 September 2026 that the private rooms carry names such as “Wabi Sabi,” that some dishes were created for American diners, and that a no-tipping policy was announced at a preview event.

For a design guide, Sushiro shows how a single repeated name can replace a patchwork of local shop names and then travel from the suburbs of Osaka to Manhattan. Compare Kura Sushi, another Osaka conveyor-sushi chain with branches in Taiwan and the United States, and Genki Sushi, the chain Sushiro once planned to combine with. For this guide we use a tuna red, a soy brown and a rice white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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