A FAMILY-favourite restaurant chain famous for delivering food to customers on conveyor belts has abruptly closed one of its sites.
The restaurant, which shot to fame in the 90s after opening in Soho, London, has shuttered its branch in a major UK city.
Yo! Sushi, which has more than 500 UK sites as well as supermarket concessions, abruptly closed its branch in Brighton.
The first Yo! Sushi restaurant opened in the UK at the beginning of 1997 to great fanfare.
At the time, people were reportedly queuing round the corner in Soho to get in just one week after the launch.
Yo!, which is famous for its sushi conveyor belts, closed up shop in Brighton over the weekend.
Closing down signs have appeared in the windows of Yo! Sushi in Jubilee Street, reported The Argus.
There has been no explanation for the closure except for a notice on the Yo! Sushi Brighton website which states the restaurant is now “permanently closed”.
No! Sushi
News of the restaurant’s closure was discussed online by locals.
One wrote on X: “Tough break for the city centre.
“Another empty spot on the high street.
“Makes you think about the wider pressures on businesses right now.”
Another said on Facebook: “What am I gonna do?”
No new occupant for the site has been announced.
Food and drink chains in general have been suffering in recent months as the cost of living has led to fewer people spending on eating out.
Businesses had been struggling to bounce back after the pandemic, only to be hit with soaring energy bills and inflation.
Multiple chains have been affected, resulting in big-name brands like Wetherspoons and Frankie & Benny’s closing branches.
In January 2023, Byron Burger fell into administration, with owners saying it would result in the loss of over 200 jobs.
Italian dining chain Prezzo revealed plans to shut 46 restaurants back in April 2024 due to soaring energy and food costs, putting 810 jobs at risk.
The Sun has approached Yo! Sushi for comment.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
