Popular Newcastle city centre restaurant closes doors suddenly

Coreena Ford
·1-min read
The empty Yo! Sushi restaurant in Newcastle
-Credit: (Image: staff photo)


A popular restaurant chain has abruptly closed one of it North East sites.

Yo! Sushi, which has more than 500 restaurants across the UK, has suddenly closed its large eatery in Newcastle’s Grainger Street, with signage and some of its fixtures and fittings already having been removed.

The international restaurant chain first moved to the former clothing shop unit eight years ago, launching a restaurant for 69 diners, most of whom could sit around the firm’s famed conveyor belt, on which food is transported from the open kitchen to diners.

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It had plumped for the former Fat Face shop unit after searching for a permanent base in Newcastle having moved out of Fenwick’s department store, to make way for its Food Hall development.

Founded in 1997, Yo! Sushi was the first restaurant to bring to the UK the concept of a Japanese “kaiten” sushi bar, that delivered food via a conveyor belt. It has grown fivefold in the last eight years, from a 74-strong group of restaurants in the UK to more than 500 restaurants and supermarket kiosks, with many more around the world.

The company still has a number of kiosks selling Yo! Sushi foods within Tesco supermarkets, but its only remaining restaurant in the North East is now it site inside the Qube entertainment area at the Metrocentre.

The company has been approached for comment.

In June 2023 the company which owned Yo! Sushi was bought by one of Japan’s biggest food companies in a deal worth £494m. Zensho Holdings snapped up Snowfox Group which in the UK operates Yo! Sushi and Taiko, which produces Japanese food-to-go for supermarkets.

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