The Booming Business Of American Omakase

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Nowhere in the West has sushi been pushed harder, priced higher, or copied faster than in New York City. While Los Angeles is the birthplace of sushi in the U.S., NYC is by far the largest, most lucrative, and most competitive market. What was once fine-dining luxury has evolved into a new mass-market standard.

Omakase is no longer a 300, 400, 500 plus dollar experience. It’s now 100, 80, even 60 dollars - available at hundreds of spots across the city. These low-priced counters not only outnumber the traditional Michelin incumbents, but also compete head to head in the same prestigious neighborhoods. It’s one of the fastest growing categories of the past 5 years - and every month, a new spot emerges, pushing the price even further down.

Omakase, which means “chef’s choice” in Japanese, is nothing new. Sushi restaurants in the U.S. have offered it for generations as a line item buried in a wide menu. But what’s new is omakase as the entire business and a standalone restaurant built for nothing else. What omakases lack in capacity and visibility, they make up for in ruthless efficiency. Throw in an inherently aesthetic, social-media-friendly product, and you get a future-proof business built for the modern age with an answer for every pressure that breaks a normal restaurant like rent, labor, marketing, and margin.

In New York City, these costs are at their most extreme. In a time where every category is stagnating, omakases here are booming with their modern, unorthodox, digital-first business model. To see the market change at a macro level, we scraped over 400,000 sushi restaurants across 6 cities to build the first accurate snapshot of the American sushi industry. And to capture the micro, we go boots on the ground across New York City and go behind the counter with three owners who’ve each bet on a different crowd and price point - $80 for the Greenwich Village and Midtown, $150 for working professionals in SoHo, and $250 for celebrities and elites in Tribeca - to find out what it really takes to win in the omakase business.

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