Creating a sushi brand, “combining heart and love”

 

-entrepreneurship story of Sushi T&T Japanese restaurant owner, Mr. Lee, from Ajax, ON

 

Sushi T & T Japanese Restaurant
(905) 683-4075
25 Harwood Ave South, Ajax, ON L1S 2B8
www.sushitnt.com

 

 

“Put one layer of rice in one piece of laver, then put some cucumber, carrot and some other jardinieres on it and sprinkle some fried pork flakes and salad on that. After that roll it and then cut it into pieces”. Everyone should be familiar with this, it is the most popular Japanese snack; sushi. In 2007, Mr. Lee, from Fuzhou, China, took over a Chinese takeaway restaurant and made it into a Japanese sushi shop. Now after 8 years, because of his typical dishes, original taste, and because of his sweet and considerate service, the business is booming.

 

 

Studying sushi in Japan
When asked about why he chose to enter into the sushi business, Mr. Lee was very talkative. He mentioned it was because of a sudden opportunity he traveled to Japan and worked in a sushi shop for 10 years.

Working 8 years as an apprentice, Mr. Lee was not satisfied to just be cleaning the floor and tables and playing waiter. While other colleagues were having fun in their free time, he started to learn Japanese on his own. Mr. Lee felt that “If you want to make good sushi, you need to understand the culture behind it”. While trying to understand Japanese culture, he also tried to observe how the chef chose his materials, and tried to learn the skills needed to make sushi. The boss saw his diligence and made Mr. Lee a chef in his shop. As time went on, Mr. Lee also understood the essence of Japanese sushi: to use your emotions to make sushi, to use your heart to make sushi and to use your love to make sushi. These 3 sentences, Mr. Lee mentions, are like “combining heart and love”. Heart means making sushi with your heart and love means making sushi with your emotions and your heart. This is the wisdom he kept using throughout his career. 

         

Starting to earn money in Canada.
After learning how to make sushi and being successful in Japan. Mr. Lee traveled thousands of miles and opened a sushi restaurant in Canada. Although the location of Mr. Lee’s sushi shop is not very crowded and it looks quite plain from outside. His shop’s 48 seats are always reserved. This is because Mr. Lee stuck to the idea of “combining heart and love”. His shop is small, with simple but warm decoration, orderly placed articles and clean food. At the same time, the shop pays a lot of attention to its dishes’ taste and quality. All kinds of sushi, te-maki, Inaha Zushi have their own characteristics. Many customers come here for its reputation and are pleased afterwards. The shop sticks to the idea of “customers first”, serving customers with hospitality and consideration, making customers feel at home.
Quality is always the secret of a long lasting business. Mr. Lee mentioned, that after his restaurant’s opening, a lot of similar sushi shops opened in the neighborhood. Some were even a few times bigger than his. But these new competitors only know how to make something superficial. The flavor of their sushi is a lot behind the original sushi that Mr. Lee learnt to make in Japan.

Because of good management and good flavor, Mr. Lee’s restaurant is really liked by customers. For 2 years in a row, his sushi shop entered into the “the Best Asian Food in Canada” competition, sponsored by “Asia Star TV”. Both times he was shortlisted in the top 10 of Canada’s catering industry.

Advocating human based management
Development of a restaurant is closely related to every staff’s hard work. Like every entrepreneur, Mr. Lee insists on a human based management system. In daily life, he treats his staff equally, never hitting or cursing his workers, making the employees feel like they belong to the restaurant. As such they want to work hard with whole of their heart for the shop’s development.

 

 

Mr. Lee’s career has had many ups and downs. But he always firmly believed that sticking to something that you love is the most important. Talking about the future, Mr. Lee wants to develop the shop he has now into something bigger and stronger. When the conditions are good enough, he wants to chose a good location in the downtown area, where he doesn’t need to care about the number of visitors. Opening a big scale sushi shop, to realize his long lost dream of having a Japanese sushi career in Canada.