N THE CU - Sushi Maki

E SushiMaki Balances
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Seafood Sustainability
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and Good Times
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Try to wrap your mind around ordering a
Chicken & Waffles Roll at a sushi restaurant…
It’s made with crispy chicken, maple mayo
and bacon bits, with a mini waffle on top. And
it’s just one of SushiMaki’s unique sushi rolls.
The restaurant began in 2000 with a single
sushi bar in Coral Gables, Fla., after Abe Ng,
president, founder, CEO and CSO (chief sushi
officer), noticed that the South Florida market was
lacking a quality sushi bar. SushiMaki has since
become more than a sushi seller, boasting a full
menu. There’s Chili Garlic Edamame and MSC
Kanisu on the appetizer menu; Grilled Chicken
Ramen on the ramen menu; sushi tacos; salads; and
a selection of sushi rolls from Seven Seas to Godzilla
Gone Wild, the latter featuring spicy tuna, spicy crab,
eel, shrimp tempura green tea soba noodles and spicy
Abe Ng
eel sauce.You can tell by the names that this is a restaurant that believes in its guests having smiles on their faces.
In 2007, SushiMaki began a relationship with Whole Foods
Market, setting up branded sushi stations in the Coral Gables, Aventura,
Pinecrest and Miami Beach Whole Foods Markets. Milam’s Markets in
Miami also has SushiMaki stations.
When the recession hit in 2008, SushiMaki saw an avenue to growth
in non-traditional venues. Now it has locations in two Florida universities and three airports, including Miami International Airport. In total,
there are 16 SushiMaki outlets in South Florida.
While Ng insists that SushiMaki doesn’t take itself too seriously, in
late March of 2012, the Miami-based enterprise became the first
restaurant on the East Coast—and the first sushi chain in North
America—to achieve Chain of Custody certification for compliance with
the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). The fish on SushiMaki’s menu
with the MSC logo are traceable to environmentally friendly and
sustainable fisheries.
SushiMaki’s primary import is Hiddenfjord salmon from the Faroe
Islands in Norway. According to the company, a close relationship with
its suppliers is crucial to its business. Hiddenfjord is a farm fishery,
which cannot be MSC-certified, but SushiMaki chose
Hiddenfjord because of its dedication to the fish supply and
aquaculture. Among its MSC-certified fish are sea bass and
kanikama (imitation crab meat).
Ng, as the CSO, stresses that the title of sushi chef is
“such a lofty title” that he won’t call himself a sushi chef,
though he studied at the California Sushi Chef Institute.
Winner of the 2011 “Minority Business of the Year” by
the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, Ng also has
been recognized by the Miami Herald and the South
Florida Business Journal.
While SushiMaki is Ng’s claim to fame, he also opened
a new restaurant concept, Pao Town, in September. The
restaurant doesn’t stray from his roots in Asian cuisine, but
it’s far from traditional. With bacon
pineapple fried rice and Peking-style hot
dogs on the menu, Pao Town follows
SushiMaki’s East-West fusion style.
In a recent interview, Ng talked with Sunbelt
Foodservice staff writer Heather Blount about SushiMaki’s exceptional
sushi, sustainable seafood and future goals.
Q: Can you tell me a little about how you got
started in sushi?
I’ve been in the business my entire life. My parents are immigrants to the country, and they opened up Chinese restaurants. I
went to school and studied hospitality and upon graduating
worked in public accounting for a couple of years. I got into the
food business in the late ’90s. SushiMaki is something that we
started in the year 2000.
Twelve years later, we have 16 locations.
Q: How did you decide to start in sushi rather
than another type of food?
We had a location in one part of town, and it was a burrito concept. We looked entrepreneurially about what that area of town
had and didn’t have. In South Miami, Fla., there was Italian, there
was seafood, there were diners; what there really wasn’t a
great deal of was sushi. So we decided to get into the sushi
business. We hired some local chefs to help us until we
could really learn that business.
And 12 years later, we’re still selling sushi. We’ve been
able to open up additional locations since our first one
opened in the summer of 2000.
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Q: You are a sushi chef?
I’m no longer behind the bar, but I
went to culinary school kind of
generally at Cornell, part of my
degree. I also have specific culinary training in sushi out in
California. I don’t consider
myself a chef; I consider myself…to have competency
and understand the food,
but we have great chefs on
our team now.
Q: Even though
you’re not a chef, you
definitely understand
preparation from
being one.
Yeah, sure. I’ve been around it for
many years now and have tasted lots of
sushi. But being a sushi chef is such a lofty
title that I’m very careful about throwing that
around. I do not consider myself a sushi chef.
Q: What makes sushi so special in today’s
market?
I think (the reason) sushi has done so well in recent years is
because it’s very portable, it’s healthy, it’s customizable. So it goes along with a lot of the
trends of eating more seafood, more vegetables; less reliant on red meat and processing.
So I think that’s kind of why you see a continued growth in sushi.
For us, specifically, why we think our sushi is different, and in
many ways better, is the quality of our ingredients is sustainable
seafood and also all natural. So when we say “all natural,” it means
free of artificial colors and flavors, and that was really kind of
born out of our partnership with Whole Foods. We sell sushi to
them at all of the Southern Florida region Whole Foods stores.
We operate our own branded kiosks in those locations. Also,
we’re the first sushi chain restaurant to be MSC certified in all of
North America. We’re really proud of that. Our sea bass, our
kanikama, our California rolls—all are prepared with seafood
that’s MSC certified, and that is an end-to-end verification
process that the seafood supply is sustainable, it’s protected and
it’s also verifiable.
Everywhere from the fishery that catches it, every step along
the supply chain. The seafood that we serve on the plate is actually what we purport it to be.
fully, whether it be the packaging people use,
organic and all natural in milk and dairy and
beef and chicken. And the seafood component of it has really been underappreciated.
People always think that the sea has an endless supply, and that simply is not the case.
In discussions with our suppliers as well
as our partners—we sell sushi at universities as well—we really thought that what
we could do to make a difference was to
source seafood supply that’s sustainable.
We looked at different organizations,
and the Marine Stewardship Council
really had a very clear path of how
we can get certified, and then we
went ahead and did it at our
restaurants about six months
ago, and just this past week
(in late September), we
rolled it out to all of
our Whole Foods,
our other supermarket chains
Q: Why did you decide to become MSC certified?
It’s one of those things where you kind of look at doing what’s
right, and one of the things about the seafood supply is it is finite. We want to make sure that for generations to
come that people can enjoy the same seafood that
we enjoy now.
You see the trends, for example,
of people eating more
thought-
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as well as
our university
operations. So we’re
really excited that we’ll
continue to be making a difference, hopefully, in how we buy and
sell our seafood.
Q: Are your customers very
aware of your certification?
That’s the biggest challenge for us is how do we
let people know that we’re doing this but not come
across as being preachy? Our brand is fun. If you look at
our website and our marketing, it’s a little bit intelligent; we
don’t take ourselves too seriously, so it’s a continual process
how we can train our team in the field to get as excited about
this as we are in management. It’s hard. A lot of times, when people go out to eat, they want to be indulgent. They don’t want to
hear about the science behind it, so it’s a delicate balance about
telling people what we do, but also not forgetting that we’re a
place for people to have a great time. You come to our restaurants, you get a great meal, great value, a glass of wine or a beer,
and it’s all a bundle of services and a bundle of things that we want
people to understand we’re more than just a regular neighborhood sushi bar.
Q: It must be difficult to balance letting people
know about sustainable seafood and ensuring
they have a good time at the restaurant.
Absolutely. That’s the biggest challenge—how far can we push?
We rolled it out at our restaurants about six months ago, but
truthfully, most people probably don’t even recognize it (the certification), so it’s a constant tension that we have on how do we
let people know about the good that we’re doing for the environment?
Q: Is all of the seafood that you serve MSC
certified?
No, it’s not. We have specific items, but this is an unending journey about finding the most sustainable seafood. Certain fishes are
farm-raised, and they cannot be MSC certified.
There are other certifications that we can get, but our salmon,
for example, is not MSC, but it’s raised in a way that’s very environmentally thoughtful. It’s from the Faroe Islands; the pens are
rotated so the sea can regenerate itself. The water is icy cold and
very clean. It’s a small family fishery in the North Atlantic, so we
look at every fish and see what we can do to make sure that we
are as sustainable as possible.
But we have a couple of fishes now that are MSC certified, and
we’re looking to continue to add. We’re looking at shrimp that is
MSC certified at this point, but every step of the way, there’s the
certification process, there’s finding the right fishery, the right distributor. It’s an exciting process, but one that requires a commitment in terms of administration.
Q: So would you say that it’s more about being
sustainable rather than about the certification?
That’s a good way of putting it. We’re really trying to be an environmentally thoughtful company, but at the very highest order,
we want to be a great restaurant company that has great-tasting
sushi and where people like to have a good time.
One of our brand tenets is to be environmentally thoughtful.
We don’t want to be one of those places that is not fun to go to,
that doesn’t have great tasting food—we’ve all been to those
places, too, so I get it. It’s a constant balancing of different objectives, and we try not to lean too hard in any way and continue to
try to find the right mix.
Q: Can you tell me about your partnership with
Whole Foods?
That started in 2007, and they have been just an incredible partner to work with. Their standards are high and exact, but we are
really thrilled that they continue to grow, and when they grow,
they take us along with them.
We’re constantly talking to them about innovation and products. They’re the early adopters of MSC certification, and they inspire us to do the very best. Everything from the packaging that we
use, the recyclability of the plastic that we use to the way that we
source our fish, the exacting standards that they have about “all
natural”—it’s just been an incredible process. Just how they’ve responded in this economy that they’re just a very resilient, wellrun, professionally managed company that we’re just excited to do
business with.
We do a lot of business with many multinational, Fortune 500
type companies. At the universities, we have partners like Aramark
and Compass or Chartwells; we do business with premier hotel
brands like the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, Westin. So part of
our early development of our company was to partner with the
very best companies we could so that we could grow along with
them and learn from them on how to manage these businesses.
Q: It sounds like SushiMaki has evolved into
more than just a restaurant.
SushiMaki was really kind of born out of a restaurant
brand, but in the last five to 10 years, with the economy
being as challenging as it’s been, we’ve had to look at other
ways to continue to grow the company, and as you said, it’s
really become a lot more than just a restaurant company. So
that is something that we’re really proud of. The footprint here
in south Florida, and as we continue to hone in on our model, we
want to export it and do this kind of sushi anchor system in other
markets as well. That’s a longer-term plan, but we have no immediate plans for growth out of South Florida. We have a lot of op-
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portunity here, and we can still get a lot better in our operations here.
Q: Do you have any concerns for SushiMaki?
I’m always concerned about the fish supply—the availability of pristine products going forward. I’m concerned
about continuing to hire and train the best sushi chef talent
around. I’m concerned about, on a bigger scale, the small business taxing and healthcare costs. Those are things that we concern ourselves with, but we focus on what we can control, and we
try to run the best operations that we can.
Q: What do you see in SushiMaki’s future?
We see continued growth. We see signs of recovery in South
Florida, so we’re excited that we’re in this market and we think that we can continue to
grow here, but we also see longer term that there’s nobody that’s really done a national
brand of sushi, and we see that as an opportunity that somebody’s going to capitalize
on, but we really see that we’re only limited by our own capacity to manage and
grow, so that we feel very fortunate about.
Q: Has SushiMaki been very affected by the economy?
No question. 2008 and 2009 were tough years, but we kind of buckled
(down), tightened our belts and looked at alternative venues like airports
and universities for growth. Our restaurants were affected, but we’re kind of
an aspirational consumption product, going out to eat. You know, sushi has
the perception of being a little bit of an affordable luxury, so no question,
our restaurants were affected, but like everybody else, we had to learn to
cope in the “new normal.”
Q: Have you noticed a change in customers as the
economy recovers?
We see people getting a little more confidence. People are understanding
that they can’t sit on their wallets all the time; they have to have a good time.
People are willing to pay for high quality food and demand the very best in
service, so we do see signs of recovery. This year is better than last year, and
last year was better than the year before, so we’ve had three solid years of improvements since ’09.
We’re happy to report that.
Q: What is your favorite SushiMaki sushi item?
We have a roll called the Budda-Cane roll, and it’s shrimp tempura with avocado and
mango. It has a great taste, but really what I love about it, too, is that the avocado and the
mango are both local products that we use. It’s one of the best-tasting rolls, but
I think there’s even deeper meaning when you’re able to kind of buy from
local farmers—it’s not just something that we say, but something that
we actually practice. Whenever possible, we try to source from
local (sources). The mixture of sweetness and saltiness and
cold avocado and mango and hot shrimp tempura really
makes for a real fun burst of flavors and temperature and
texture, so it’s a great item. That’s a favorite of mine.
One other favorite, too, is our Chicken & Waffles roll.
It really is a fried chicken with bacon served in a sushi
roll with waffles and a maple reduction. So it’s very unexpected—chicken and waffles colliding with sushi.
That’s been a lot of fun as well and guests have loved it.
Q: Do you have a lot of unexpected items?
Yeah, again, it’s part of that whole idea, getting back to we
don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we have fun with the
menu. We pride ourselves on trying to push it and be a little bit
edgy and just allow our guests to know that we’re more than just a
regular sushi bar. We continually try to innovate.
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