17th April – 卯月
Different to the fancy Sushi dining, Sushi train is cheaper and mostly self service to take whatever you like to eat from the belt conveyor. If there does not have your favorite Sushi, order from the tablet on the table.
Nowadays, 回転寿司(Kaitenzushi = Sushi train) exists everywhere in the world, however 回転寿司 in Japan is beyond the expectation – high quality and fresh ingredients, even have variety of side menu! And most likely, they are very cheap!!
As Kaitenzushi is very popular dining for public, there are various chain companies such as スシロー (Sushiro-), 無添くら寿司 (Muten Kurazushi), はま寿司 (Hamazushi), かっぱ寿司 (Kappazushi) etc, and surprisingly, there most menu consist of 100 yen (About US$1) per plates. How can those 100 yen Kaitenzushi create profit then?
Generally sea urchin sushi and raw tuna sushi cost the highest at around 75 yen to 85 yen. However they sell them at 100 yen, so the profit is just 15 yen… there is a trick why they can sell those expensive ingredients at low cost.
In Kaitenzushi shop, they are also selling cheaper cost ones at the same price as the expensive ones – Egg sushi at 30 yen, shrimp sushi at 25 yen and cooked tuna sushi at 10 yen… Those sushi are children’s favorite! Kaitenzushi targets family customers so the shop locations are often close from the new residential areas. Enriching the menu which kids would love and use the low cost ingredients for those, can create a lot profit to the company. Even they have not 100 yen but still cheap side dishes such as Ramen, Karaage, various desserts etc, so people who are not familiar with fish also can enjoy the meal.
Another reason to make possible to run the 100 yen Kaitenzushi is labor costs. They need to produce massive amount of sushi rice so seems like a lot work to do – but they ask robots to do this job! Moreover, introducing self service tablet to order the food enable shops to reduce the number of people working as waiter / waitress. Even this tablet service analyse the menu which are popular at the time on the table, so it can reduce the food discard. Cutting the labor costs and better analyse to regularly check the food popularity, two birds with one stone! (一石二鳥＝Isseki Nichou)
Even they are cheap, they still keep the freshness of the food. Some shops introduce the plates with IC chip in it, so they can trace how long that plate has been on the belt conveyor. Therefore if the time on there go over certain period, they will discard. They even do not place plates too many so people can order from the tablet, making fresh one for the table and reduce the wastes too.
One Kaitenzushi chain くら寿司 does interesting but very clever marketing system in their shops. There are game system installed on each table, people can play game and winner can get capsule toy. To play this game, there needs 5 plates per game. Therefore, if they eat 4 plates of sushi, there is a higher chance that they will eat another plate. Thus it can increase the plates per table.
On the other hand, there are rumors that some of the shops use alternative fishes which looks similar to the ones which should be sold, or use the dead fish in order to reduce the cost and maximize the profit.
One of the alternative example could be sunfish instead of tuna. Sunfish is cheaper to get than tuna. In the Japanese law, it is necessary to show the ingredients on the packs if it is sold in the shops but there is an exception – if food is cooked right there where people purchase at the point such as restaurants, there is no strict restriction to reveal the real name of the ingredient. Therefore, you might have been eating similar but not the actual ingredient that are shown on the menu???
Dead fish can be from the framed fish which died before it was taken, or fishes that are floating on the surface of the sea, fishes lived deep under the sea. Those dead fish are sold at 5~10% of the alive fish, and they are sold cut and still fresh. Therefore, nothing is different to the ones which were alive at the time when they were taken from the sea. On second thought, even the living fish are also killed and processed, so it is almost the same as dead ones from the sea? Just a little bit less fresh than the alive ones.
Considering all the facts, Kaitenzushi in Japan use variety of strategies to make the affordable plates to people, and there are many reasons to make it possible for them to run the businesses.
You will surprise the great quality Kaitenzushi in Japan, if you come to Japan, I recommend you to go there at least once:)
Little Japan Dictionary 