Inventors: Len-Sun Lai
Patent number: 6179088
Filing date: Mar 31, 1998
Issue date: Jan 30, 2001
Hey, lets go get some conveyor belt sushi… Miniature wooden “sushi boats” traveling small canals bring us value-minded consumers delicious treats! We don’t have time for a leisurely meal and we don’t want any leftovers! Small portions please…
From Wikipedia: Conveyor belt sushi was invented by Yoshiaki Shiraishi (1914-2001), who had problems staffing his small sushi restaurant and had difficulties managing the restaurant by himself. He got the idea of a conveyor belt sushi after watching beer bottles on a conveyor belt in an Asahi brewery. After five years of development, including the design of the conveyor belt and the speed of operations, Shiraishi opened the first conveyor belt sushi Mawaru Genroku Sushi in Osaka in 1958, quickly creating a chain of 240 restaurants all over Japan. However, the number of restaurants was down to 11 in 2001. Shiraishi also invented a robotic sushi, served by robots, but this idea has not had commercial success.