More and more sushi chain operating companies are replacing conveyor belts with digital videos, touchscreens and other methods to make the process of choosing one’s food more fun. — Unsplash
OSAKA: More and more conveyor belt sushi restaurant chains have abandoned the practice of serving sushi on a rotating conveyor belt. Some restaurants have introduced touchscreens that present images of sushi dishes on a virtual conveyor belt.
The move is meant to prevent nuisance behaviour by customers and to help reduce food waste.
Sushi chain operating companies are using digital videos and other methods to make the process of choosing one’s food more fun.
Industry leader Akindo Sushiro has introduced a digital conveyor belt sushi display system called “Digital Sushiro Vision”, or Digiro. A large touchscreen at each table at its restaurants displays the flow of sushi on video.
Customers can place orders by touching the screen, which displays recommended items as well.
The company says that the system has been well received since it was introduced at some Sushiro restaurants in September 2023. The firm plans to increase the number of stores with this system to 19 nationwide by the end of September.
A video of a customer licking the mouth of a bottle of soya sauce at a Sushiro outlet spread on the Internet in 2023.
To prevent such troublesome behaviour, Sushiro stopped using conveyor belts at all of its stores and switched to a system where customers use a touch panel to place their orders.
However, as Koichi Mizutome, president of Sushiro’s parent company Food & Life Companies, observed, “sushi moving along the belt is more lively”. Thus, the firm decided to introduce the Digiro system.
“We want to balance reducing food loss and ensuring hygiene with the fun of getting to try new types of sushi,” a spokesperson for the company said.
Having sushi move along conveyor belts was a major draw for all of these companies’ restaurants. The problem was that it increased waste. For hygiene reasons, they would discard sushi that had been on the conveyor belt for a certain amount of time.
The sushi chains’ move away from the conveyor belt system also stems from changing consumer attitudes.
In a survey conducted by Maruha Nichiro in 2024, 81.5% of respondents said they ate more sushi prepared after ordering than sushi picked off the conveyor belt.
Hamazushi, a firm under the umbrella of Zensho Holdings, has also stopped using conveyor belts at 90% of its outlets.
It has introduced a system that uses a linear high-speed track to deliver the ordered items to each table. The firm estimates that the new system will lead to a reduction in food waste of about 1,000 tonnes per year.
Like Sushiro, some of its stores have installed video panels that allow customers to choose items.
Kura Sushi, for its part, plans to keep the conveyor belt system in all of its restaurants, while also introducing order lanes.
The company says it has reduced waste to about 3% by using artificial intelligence to analyse trends in what customers are choosing and thereby deciding what items to put on the conveyor belt.
A company official said that there is a lot of demand, especially from foreign visitors to Japan, to experience conveyor-belt sushi as a part of Japanese culture.
The company installed a 123m-long conveyor belt at its flagship store that opened in the Ginza district in Tokyo in April.
“Part of the essence of conveyor-belt sushi is the fun of picking items off the conveyor,” said conveyor-belt sushi critic Nobuo Yonekawa.
“Sushi restaurants with no conveyor belts are efficient, and the number of such restaurants will probably increase in future. However, if sushi restaurants do not come up with ways to make it fun, customers will drift away.” – The Japan News/Asia News Network
