Sushi chain digests local investment

Retired Sarasota executive John Cranor, onetime president and CEO of both KFC and Long John Silver's, continues to put his restaurant knowledge to good use.

His latest venture: conveyor belt sushi.

Cranor recently joined the board of directors at Washington, D.C.-based Wasabi Co. The firm is a chain of sushi restaurants that seeks to bring a popular serving style of sushi in Japan to high-end malls in the United States. In the conveyor belt system, called Kaiten, plates of sushi are placed on a belt that runs past every counter seat and table. Customers pick up what they want off the belt, and prices are set on the color of the plates.

“It's very simple and quick,” Cranor tells Coffee Talk. “And the food is fantastic.”

A past chairman of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, Cranor joined the Wasabi board earlier this year through the Tamiami Angel Fund, which invested in Wasabi Co. Cranor is a member of the Naples-based growth capital investment fund.

Wasabi, meanwhile, was founded in 2005. The company currently has locations outside Washington, D.C., Boston and in Los Angeles. It plans to open at least five more stores in 2012, including one at the Florida Mall in Orlando.

“For the past seven years, the management team at Wasabi has refined our restaurant concept to a point where we are now ready for exponential growth,” Wasabi CEO Clyde (Bo) Davis, says in a release. “Our restaurants offer flavorful and healthy sushi in a design-driven environment that high-end mall shoppers are looking for. Partnering with Tamiami and benefiting from the experience John Cranor brings will enable us to grow on a national scale.”

Cranor, who will remain chairman of the board of AFC Enterprises, the parent company of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, predicts good times, and good eats, at Wasabi. “The remarkable thing about the company is they are already making money,” says Cranor. “They are in a very good position to be very successful with the concept.”