Jun 11, 2026
An affordable conveyer sushi restaurant has been a huge hit with Chinese social media users — and it’s about to come to the US.
The restaurant is Sushiro, a Japanese conveyor belt sushi franchise that recently expanded to China. Diners are uploading videos showing off their towers of finished Sushiro plates on Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok.
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Conveyor belt sushi restaurants charge per plate, so each individual piece of the tower represents an individual charge. Patrons can afford to rack up so many plates because Sushiro is relatively inexpensive; each plate costs anywhere from 8 yuan (a little over $1 in USD) to 20 yuan (around $3 in USD).
“Among similar sushi chains, it’s relatively affordable yet still very good,” says Danson Deng, who goes to Sushiro around once a week.
Here’s what to know about the sushi chain (and its stock) ahead of its opening in Times Square later this year.
Chinese diners are paying for people to hold their place in Sushiro’s five-hour lines
Sushiro launched its first Chinese location in 2021, in Guangzhou. But it didn’t take off in China until late 2026, when it opened a restaurant in Shanghai.
That first day in Shanghai, 700 groups of diners lined up to try the restaurant. Some of them waited as much as 14 hours to finally try the conveyor belt sushi.
Interest has gone down since then, but not by much. During the weekend, people have to wait as long as 5 hours to get a table at the store’s busiest locations. Much like during early iPhone releases, people are paying others to wait in line for them.
“This positive response has spread through social media to Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu, and we believe Sushiro’s ability to attract customers around mainland China is accelerating,” says a spokesperson for Sushiro’s parent company, Food & Life Companies.
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The company is using that goodwill to expand its overseas locations. It’s hoping to grow its number of overseas locations significantly by the end of this fiscal year, including in North America.
Food & Life Companies already operates one restaurant in Boston: a sushi tavern called Sakabayashi. But its plans to bring Sushiro to New York City would mark the first time Food & Life brings its conveyor belt restaurants to the States.
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Sushiro’s YTD stock price is way up — despite food safety scares earlier in the year
Sushiro’s popularity has been, predictably, good for its stock price. SGLOF is up by 20% YTD, down from peaks over 35% in May. It’s up by almost 50% compared to this time last year.
This is despite multiple reports of food safety concerns across a couple of different Sushiro locations.
In April 2025, an online video seemingly showed a rat crawling around a Sushiro location in Hong Kong; a later inspection by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department didn’t find a rat, but did find the location’s cleanliness “unsatisfactory.”
In March 2026, Food & Life Companies stock fell by 14% when a consumer reportedly found parasite eggs in a tuna dish at a Beijing Sushiro restaurant. Stock prices recovered quickly, and Sushiro lines remained long.
Deng said that “people have grown somewhat immune” to food safety scares because they happen all the time. He’s continued to be a loyal customer.
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Kit Pulliam is a DC-based financial journalist with over five years of experience writing, editing, and fact-checking financial content.
