Starting at 11 baht per piece, building a sushi business worth 500 million baht, a knockout punch for the 27-year-old man who created the Shinkanzen Sushi brand

Sushi, a food from the land of raw fish, is a popular menu for Thai people. At the same time, it is one of the top lists for those who are looking for a career and want to open their own restaurants. If you are one of those who dream of opening a sushi restaurant, let me invite you to see behind the scenes of creating a sushi brand with over 20 branches, which started with an investment of hundreds of thousands of baht, but now has sales reaching 500 million baht in 5 years. Moreover, during the COVID-19 crisis, sales were still good and income was able to support over 670 employees without laying off a single one. The above is the work of a 27-year-old man, 'Mr. Sharp-Chanawee Homtoey', co-founder of '

A sushi restaurant that started when I was a student “Before Shinkanzen Sushi, during my second year of university, I opened a Japanese-style ice cream shop, which sold very well. But after a while, many dessert shops opened, causing sales to drop. It was like the craze was over. The shop wasn’t as popular as before, so I thought of changing direction from desserts to savory food. I looked at what Japanese food people liked. In the end, I decided on sushi because there weren’t any sushi restaurants like in the city near Thammasat University (the location of the original shop and the school where Mr. Sharp studied). “I wasn’t in the sushi business before, so I looked for a partner, Ming (Supanart Sajjarattanakul, co-founder), because when Instagram first came out, more than 80% of the pictures that Ming posted were sushi. So I thought of this friend as a possible partner. But Ming had never eaten it, never made it. So in the beginning, we went to learn how to make sushi together, from cooking rice, slicing fish, buying ingredients, and trying to list suppliers. Of course, we thought of Makro.” “When I first opened the sushi shop, I also sold desserts. Later, I opened Shinkanzen Sushi full-time. When I started, there weren’t many Japanese restaurants like today. There were only expensive ones. There were no very cheap restaurants. Luckily, we entered the inexpensive sushi market quite early, so there wasn’t much competition. After graduating, I opened Food Selection Co., Ltd.”

From inside Thammasat University . To expand the store more than 20 Branch “Not long after I graduated, after we finished setting up the office system and completing the central kitchen, we started expanding branches. At first, our customer base was students. When we started opening and expanding branches, we realized that another group was “First Jobbers”, which are graduates who started asking for more branches to be opened in the city. We also started expanding to families as our customer base because people are looking for products that are cost-effective and cheap.” “After entering the shopping mall, there was one feedback that customers wanted to order take-away but didn’t want to wait. At first, if customers ordered take-away, the orders would be run to customers who ate in the restaurant. This meant there were 10 tables of customers who ate in the restaurant, and the customers who ordered take-away who had just ordered would be the 11th in line, so they would have to wait from the first to the 11th person. So we thought that customers didn’t want to wait that much, and some customers with long queues chose not to buy and chose to go to another restaurant. This became our challenge, how to solve this problem. So two years ago, ShinkanzenGo was opened, separate from Shinkanzen Sushi. Customers can come at any time, as long as their orders are not combined with those in the restaurant. And it's already made. You can pick it up, pay and go home. If it's a big branch, such as Samyan Mitrtown, ShinkanzenGo is in Shinkanzen Sushi. But some branches open as small kiosks in supermarkets, such as Mega Bangna, Robinson Bangrak, Robinson Srisaman, so it can meet the needs of customers."

The strategy that made the restaurant successful ! “At first, we only did marketing through Facebook. It was word of mouth, focusing on sharing, checking in, and posting to get people to share and join activities on Facebook. We gave away sushi dolls and joined the activities together. When we went to Japan, we brought stuff to give to customers. We focused on activities like this. We did this for a year.” “Later, we started changing the promotions like real restaurants do. The first promotion was salmon reduced to 11 baht per piece, which was Shinkanzen Sushi’s most famous promotion. Another thing is that we sold salmon for 11 baht in the month that salmon prices went up and people thought salmon was expensive. At that time, our salmon cost about 8-9 baht per piece. But we wanted to build the brand as quickly as possible. It became the talk of the town in that area. Everyone flocked to eat there.”

COVID-19: The first crisis in life. “The first impact: Our shop was closed first, and our sales dropped significantly. But luckily, we had already done delivery first. The second impact: We encountered news that people could contract COVID-19 after eating salmon, which caused our sales to drop for two days. People started to worry and stopped eating fish, but Shinkanzen Sushi mainly sells salmon, until the Japanese embassy came out to clarify, and customers started to come back. The third impact: China found COVID-19 on a cutting board, which was Norwegian salmon. However, the impact was only a few days, and sales returned. We encountered three waves of impacts, until the government announced that businesses could reopen. Now, we’re back to 100%.” “When asked if it was affected, almost 20% of our total sales dropped in three months, but in terms of the food business, it was affected by at least 50%, so we survived.” “Another hero product of ours is ‘pickled eggs’, a new product from Shinkanzen Sushi that sells quite a lot, about 50% of which are delivery orders. I think that if you didn’t come up with this menu, there are many Japanese food brands. You can choose any brand, but if you want to eat pickled eggs and Japanese food, you have to choose us. We went all out, promoting on every channel. Started marketing to think of content about pickled eggs and various Ads. We can think quickly, think today, do it tomorrow, and customers have responded very well to the pickled egg menu. About 200,000 people reached this promotion on Facebook. "We still focus on promotions about delivery. And now we have joined hands with Shopee to sell Deal, which is a coupon. And customers come to buy things at the store. Therefore, there will be sales at the store. The advantage is that there will be more traffic at the store. And attract customers from many places to come and eat more from this discount code. Which sells about 3,000 coupons. We sell 1 coupon per 1 product. Meaning that when you come to eat, you have to use a coupon to buy 1 product. And when you leave the house, come to the store, you have to eat something else, buy something else too."

Treat people ... Key to a fast recovery: “We have no policy to reduce or lay off employees. Out of 670 employees, we saved almost everyone by talking to employees, asking for cooperation from employees who want to go home, allowing them to take leave in advance or take vacation, except for part-time employees who are students. We really can’t save them. As for part-time employees who have been with us for a long time, we have adjusted them to be full-time employees.” “As for the office, we have adjusted the workload down. Everyone works half a month, but the other half is supported by social security. In terms of our people, we tend to save employees. We were lucky to choose to save employees because at that time we were talking about how to make COL (labor cost) around 13% of sales, which is a lot if we had to pay the full amount. We were very lucky that the employees were ready to support the company. I also have to thank the employees for helping each other as much as possible. Finally, after the government announced the relaxation of measures, the advantage of saving employees is that we were able to open the shop on the first day. On the first day of opening, many branches made new sales highs for the branches.”

Kitchen management, stock, and front-of-house services have changed in this era New Normal “For the central kitchen, we plan to expand the central kitchen by trying to reduce the responsibilities of the storefront, such as slicing fish. Most Japanese restaurants send fish to be sliced ​​at the storefront, but we slice fish from the central kitchen. And there is an innovation, which is paper to absorb fish blood and fat that flows out. If not absorbed, it will make the salmon smell. In Japan, this method is used in omakase. And it can also store salmon for a longer time. It is a way to age the fish. The longer it ages, the tastier it is. We do this method and send it to the storefront. The storefront can peel off the paper and sell it right away without having to re-skin the fish.” “As for stock management, we manage from the central kitchen and send it to the storefront. Some branches have a stock storage area in the mall. When selling low, stock is not a problem. But when selling high, we have to stock a lot. We have to find more storage. This period will start to be a problem because it is the period when sales start to increase a lot. Now we solve the problem by sending more products. The warehouse has to deliver almost every day. Normally, we deliver every other day. And it is divided into dry goods and cold goods. As mentioned, the rent is calculated per square meter. We do not want to lose space for storing goods.” “During the New Normal, we have measures for employees to wear masks and gloves, both when serving and in the kitchen. In the kitchen, we did this a lot before. But during COVID-19, we have temperature checks, QR code menu scanning, and we have an operations team to check if employees are following the rules and regulations. We also teach all the employees at the store. The employees who work at the store must also train the operations on what the corporate culture is like. We have to talk about how to deal with customers when there is a complaint or the mindset when talking to customers, emphasizing service psychology. You have to study before you go to serve customers, practice with customers, and then you have to take an exam.”

The secret to success Shinkanzen Sushi “The key to doing business is to take action. I used to teach Thammasat University students or vocational students. Everyone wrote a 10-20 page business plan, but in the end, no matter how good the business plan is, if you don’t take action, it’s useless. It’s not wrong to think carefully and it’s the right thing to do because investment has risks. But thinking and not taking action is wrong.” “As I said, when I opened a dessert shop, I thought it wouldn’t work either. But we started doing it. When it failed, there were two options: stop doing it or develop it further or change the ice cream shop to other shops. Of course, I chose to fight on. “Shinkanzen Sushi has encountered many problems, but every problem has a solution. If you ask if Shinkanzen Sushi is the most delicious Japanese restaurant, I have to say no. But it’s a restaurant where you can eat every day. Customers feel that it’s worth it more than other brands. I think we’ve won.”