Where’s Waldo in this poster? Just kidding. He hasn’t taken our sushi-making class ... yet.
How about you? Do you see yourself in one of the pictures? If you’ve been a part of our journey, you may find YOU in this image.
If you do, I hope you remember "rolling" with your work colleagues, friends, family members, and other sushi enthusiasts. I’m sure you’ll remember getting involved with myself and the rest of the Breakthrough Sushi crew.
Even if you can’t find yourself in the poster, you’re still an integral part of our story. Perhaps you were one of the lucky guests at a catered sushi event we hosted. If so, I hope you still think about our refreshing Sake Mojito; soft and juicy Chicken Yakitori; Hickory-Smoked, Cured, Ocean Trout Sashimi; and Tai Snapper Nigiri with Pink Peppercorn and Truffle Oil.
It took 10 years to make this poster. Well, it took 10 seconds for a wonderful app to make this poster, but this is the product of 10 years of hosting sushi classes and taking pictures. This poster contains more than 2,000 pictures.
Looking Back…
It's hard to believe it has been 10 years since I started Breakthrough Sushi. I still remember my first class… with three guests! You may think it was "just" three. But to me, I was thinking, "Wow, three guests have signed up for my first sushi class. Excellent!"
Back then, no one knew Kaz Matsune. No one had ever heard of Breakthrough Sushi. Still, three people trusted me to show them how to make sushi and sign up for the class.
Fast forward 10 years and, after some 800 events, 20,000 guests and many Fortune 500 corporate clients, here we are. Looking at this poster, I feel so fortunate. I’ve been able to keep teaching the sushi class, running and growing Breakthrough Sushi for the past decade.
We’ve worked with huge corporations such as Amazon, Adobe, and Facebook, but I’m grateful to each and every guest who made beautiful and delicious sushi. It’s many of their stories that stick with me most.
One boy attended our class three times, for example, and eventually requested that we cater his Bar Mitzvah. One teenager requested Breakthrough Sushi as a Make-A-Wish participant. Our longest client recently asked us to host her 50th birthday after two years without celebrations due to the pandemic.
Our public class is now the longest-running sushi class in San Francisco and the hundreds of positive Yelp reviews we’ve received in this time are one of my favourite achievements.
Where is Breakthrough Sushi Now?
Though the pandemic hit us hard, we’re coming back stronger than ever. Our sales dropped 90% in April 2020; it was a very hard time for us as well as for the rest of the food/event industry. However, it was out of this that our online sushi class was born. This was very popular in 2021 for our corporate clients as many of them switched to remote work. I believe we also became the first company to offer sushi kits to all 50 U.S. states, British Columbia, and Alberta, Canada during this time.
Another (good) byproduct of the pandemic was YouTube videos. Because I was doing fewer events, I was able to utilize the time to make some sushi videos. Check out our channel here.
We’re now back to almost the pre-pandemic level in our sushi-making classes, sushi catering, and private sushi dinners! In addition to our San Francisco classes, we’re also hosting in San Jose and San Carlos.
Rolling (Moving) Forward
I consider Breakthrough Sushi to be in the business of education and entertainment. In this light, our mission is to continue to promote happiness and teach skills, using sushi as a vehicle.
Now, even among talk of recession, inflation, and many other economic instabilities, we’re hopeful about the future. We’re ready to expand and further spread the joy of sushi when people need it most.
Warren Buffet said, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." I learned this during the pandemic. Many people were in fear and many food-related businesses struggled. We created something new: an online sushi-making class with a sushi kit and it cheered people up, too.
People have kept us going and we love making people happy through the art of sushi more than anything. So now, we keep on rolling: expanding our locations, adding new venues and more public classes, setting up sushi catering and high-end private sushi chef services (Omakase dinner, anyone?). I’ll continue making YouTube videos and educational brochures, and I’ll keep speaking to the community about the power of great sushi and team-building.
Keep your eyes on us to learn how to cure salmon for sushi, how to strengthen your team connections, and way more. Maybe you’ll even get to see Waldo in one of our classes.
Interested in having Breakthrough Sushi host a team-building, sushi-making event or having us cater a private event? Request a free quote here.