How to Open a Sushi Restaurant Part 2 — Required Licenses and Administrative Procedures
Qualifications and permits required to open a sushi restaurant
The qualifications and permits required to open a sushi restaurant are the "Food Sanitation Supervisor qualification" and the "Restaurant Business License."
Because the "Food Sanitation Supervisor qualification" is required when applying for the "Restaurant Business License" at the public health center, the general flow is to obtain the "Food Sanitation Supervisor qualification" first and then submit the "Restaurant Business License" application.
Food Sanitation Supervisor
Qualified persons such as dietitians, cooks, and food sanitation managers, or those who have completed a designated course, can become a "Food Sanitation Supervisor."
A "Food Sanitation Supervisor" must be present at one or more per shop, and if there is none, you take a course at the public health center to obtain the qualification.
The cost varies by region, but about 10,000 yen is typical.
Restaurant Business License
The "Restaurant Business License" can be obtained by applying to the public health center that has jurisdiction over the location of your shop and passing the review.
The period from submitting the application documents to the public health center until obtaining the license is about 2 to 3 weeks, and the cost is 18,300 yen.
The flow for obtaining it is: first consult the public health center in advance, then submit the required documents described below and apply for the business license.
Once the business license application is accepted, a staff member in charge at the public health center conducts an inspection, and once you pass the inspection, the business license is issued.
<Documents required for the Restaurant Business License application>
- Documents certifying the Food Sanitation Supervisor qualification
- Restaurant Business License application form (obtainable from the public health center counter or the local government website, etc.)
- Location sketch map (a sketch map showing the location of the shop, starting from the nearest station, etc.)
- Outline and layout drawing of business equipment (a list of equipment inside the shop; obtainable from the public health center counter or the local government website, etc.)
- Floor plan of the interior layout
- Certificate of registered matters (in the case of a corporation)
Other qualifications
If the capacity is 30 people or more, you must also assign a fire safety officer who holds the "Fire Prevention Manager" qualification.
The "Fire Prevention Manager" qualification can be obtained by going to the local fire station and taking a course.
The course is one or two days, and the cost is about 3,000 to 5,000 yen.
Note that there is no qualification required to become a sushi chef itself.
There are special cases—for example, if you handle pufferfish sushi, a "pufferfish chef license" is required—but a cook's license is also not mandatory, so it is a world of craftsmen where skill and ability are everything.
Administrative procedures required for opening
When opening a sushi restaurant, the administrative procedures differ depending on whether you do so as a sole proprietor or as a corporation.
Which is better changes depending on your sales and management form.
Generally, it is said that once sales reach about 5 to 6 million yen or more, a corporation becomes more advantageous in terms of taxes.
Also, in the case of a sushi restaurant, being a corporation does not particularly make it easier to attract customers, and apart from taxation, being a corporation is a plus when credibility is needed in dealings with financial institutions for financing, or with business partners for procurement, and the like.
Note that if you want to open as a franchise, you can do so even as a sole proprietor, but some chains will not contract unless you are a corporation, so you need to check the terms.
If you register as a corporation
When establishing a company as a corporation, you submit the documents described below to the Legal Affairs Bureau or the competent tax office, but since preparing corporate registration documents yourself is inefficient, we recommend finding a judicial scrivener or tax accountant who will handle it for a reasonable fee.
If you search online with keywords such as "corporate registration, low cost," you can quickly find specialist providers who will handle it for about 10,000 yen.
With capital of 0 yen, you can carry out the administrative establishment for a cost of about 200,000 yen for a stock company (kabushiki kaisha) or about 100,000 yen for a limited liability company (godo kaisha).
Note that the advantages of a limited liability company are that establishment costs and running costs are low, and there is no obligation to publish financial results.
Transition to a stock company is also possible, so if you have no particular attachment to being a stock company, a limited liability company is sufficient.
Also, opening a bank account is necessary. If you do not yet have credibility, opening an account at a megabank is a high hurdle, so it is a relatively easy method to first open an account at an online bank such as Rakuten Bank and then apply afterward.
However, in the case of major banks, maintaining internet banking often costs several thousand yen per month, so if being a major bank is not important, an online bank alone is sufficient.
Since it greatly shortens the time required for transfer processing, it is better to set up internet banking.
<Documents required if registering as a corporation *outsourcing recommended>
- Registration application form
- Mount sheet for payment of registration and license tax
- Articles of incorporation
- Decision document of the promoters
- Letter of acceptance of office by the director(s) at establishment
- Letter of acceptance of office by the representative director at establishment
- Seal registration certificate of the director(s) at establishment
- Document certifying that capital has been paid in
- Seal notification form
- Document stating the matters to be registered, or a CD-R on which they are saved
and so on
If you start as a sole proprietor
In the case of a small-scale individually owned sushi restaurant, since there is little advantage to being a corporation other than in tax matters, there is no problem starting as a sole proprietor.
A realistic approach is to first start as a sole proprietor, and if annual sales look likely to reach around 5 million yen, transition to a limited liability company, then watch the situation and transition to a stock company if necessary.
Note that if you operate as a sole proprietor, you submit the following documents to the tax office that has jurisdiction over your place of tax payment.
<Documents required to start as a sole proprietor>
- Notification of business opening/closing, etc.
- Application for approval of blue-form tax return
- Notification of the valuation method for inventory assets and the depreciation method for depreciable assets for income tax
and so on
Summary
What is required to open a sushi restaurant are the "Food Sanitation Supervisor qualification" and the "Restaurant Business License," and it is not especially complicated just because it is a sushi restaurant.
If you carry out corporate registration, the procedures become slightly more complicated, but since having an amateur prepare the documents wastes time unnecessarily, it is better to make good use of a low-cost specialist provider.
For administrative procedures, you only need to clear the necessary requirements without error, so it is better not to devote too much effort to them, and instead to pour your energy into more important practical matters such as the design of a shop that pleases your target customers and your business plan.
