I love watching Japanese restaurant videos.

[boomchakabowwow]

Okay. Maybe not watch them: listen to them.

They (videos) are my sleep aide. 8 hours a night of sleep starts for me in Japanese.
I think it’s because I don’t understand Japanese. A fishing video may say, “ hey, look at this fish!” I’ll kinda come awake and grab my iPad and look at the darn fish. In Japanese a woman can say “ oh no my …”. I’ll never know to look. Hah.

so. Noise cancellation headphones and some Japan restaurant video. There is some wild food over there. Huge pasta dishes where the take cold noodles and reheat by putting them into hot oil. Deep fry!

This one looks good! Not sure how everyone stays do slender. And Japan as a country eats a lot of eggs, I think!

 

[NickMinton]

I’m always surprised that the Japanese style of restaurants isn’t more popular in the United States (small staff, small space, small menus but really high quality and focus)

 

[Uncle Danny]

I’m always surprised that the Japanese style of restaurants isn’t more popular in the United States (small staff, small space)

So they only hire little people?

 

[NickMinton]

So they only hire little people?

 

[sanmateo]

I’m always surprised that the Japanese style of restaurants isn’t more popular in the United States (small staff, small space, small menus but really high quality and focus)

many places in the USA have strict zoning about where restaurants can go, minimum parking requirements, and regulations for kitchen space, refrigeration equipment, and dish washing facilities. All of these make it really difficult to cover overhead with a small restaurant.

Instead what we get are food trucks, which is the market solution workaround to the over-regulation of brick-and-mortar restaurants


(also I bet many of the small restaurants like you mention have the owners living in a small apartment upstairs in the same building; zoning regulations make that difficult in the US.)

 

[Ochazuke]

+1 to @sanmateo - also add in the regulation of alcohol and the liquor licensing system. In most parts of the world, restaurants are a fairly low barrier to entry business model. The US makes it so that you need investors or your own wealth before you can start to think about it.

I explored doing a 10 seat, very lowkey sushi counter like the ones I love in Japan. The space was only 740 sq ft. Between all the regulation, zoning, and requirements from building department, health dept, etc., the construction costs would have been close to $500,000. Then add in Boston's infamous alcohol licensing costs and at the end of the day I was looking at almost $850,000 just to open what was supposed to be a very chill, relatively inexpensive sushi restaurant using local fish.

Once I finished doing the estimates it was clear that I could only make it work if I switched to omakase style (which I really did not want to do). At the end of the day, the numbers just didn't make sense.

Meanwhile my uncle in Japan opened a small counter seating restaurant for around $15,000. It's really nuts to think about how messed up the US system is.