Viral Videos Across Japan Cause Trouble for Kaitenzushi

 “This is a crisis not only for our stores, but for the entire conveyor belt sushi industry,” Okamoto said

Japan’s signature dish, Sushi is mostly famous for being served on conveyor belts. A viral video has terrorized the conveyor belt sushi industry. The video displays a young boy licking a soy sauce bottle cover and rubbing his saliva on a passing food, one man went ahead and snatched the food that was destined to another table.  This behavior of this young boy and many others have made the owners furious. Customers are disgusted and are excluding the use of restaurants that have conveyor belts. 

Choshimaru, who owns a franchise of 63 restaurants in the greater Tokyo area, has conveyor belts in use in all of them. After the deceleration of his business due to the viral videos, he brought the belts to a halt and asked the waiters to serve traditional style. When the use of hi-tech isn’t good, here we have the restaurants opting for traditional ways to serve which makes it impossible for the pranksters to gain access to the food.  

According to the SoraNews 24 website, Choshimaru said all of its conveyor belts would stop by late April. The Industry of Kaitenzushi (Conveyor belts) in 2021 was estimated worth ¥740bn (£4.5bn/$5.4bn), has now faced back lash due to these viral videos. Apart from Choshimaro, many others made changes, Sushiro implemented a new way to place an order and conveyed the message to his patron customers that their order will come via an “express lane” which will put an end to the activities of trouble makers.