Today we’d like to introduce you to Kayo Asazu.
Hi Kayo, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
When my husband Také and I dreamed to have own restaurant, we realized we could only start small because of our financial and the risk we could take. We started as a small farmers market vender “Deli Bento” back in 2005. We were selling Japanese Bento and other small dished at Sunset Valley Farmers Market.
At the same time, we were raising a daughter, Kaya 5 and a son Kenta 3 and Také was working full time at a local Japanese restaurant and I was waiting tables part-time, so just adding this part-time business, it already made our schedule crazy, but meeting people and selling our products was so rewarding.
While we were at the farmers market every Saturday, one thing we always heard from our customers was “so, where is your shop?” and we really wished if we could have place we could offer our product not just for Saturday but everyday.
In order to excel our dream restaurant, we have added catering service that we were delivering bento when we could and teaching sushi at our customer’s residence.
During this time, we started to see some food trucks are popping up around the town and we thought it could be the easier option before starting brick and mortar without spending a lot of money.
After doing so for about four years, we were able to save enough to purchase used food truck in 2009, and we refinished to make it “Sushi-A-Go-Go” Austin’s first sushi truck.
Since I wanted Také to stay in full-time sushi chef position at the restaurant he was working to keep family financial steady, I have started “Sushi-A-Go-Go” in June 2009 alone at the gas station parking lot in East Austin.
Because many people thought offering sushi out of food track was pretty crazy, I got enough media attentions without spending money.
Even there were handful people felt suspicious to eat sushi out of trailer, as we were proving it could be as good as ones from restaurants, and we were proud to have smallest, cleanest kitchen because I was the only one to keep it up so everything was super well controlled.
Sushi-A-Go-Go started to be known and got really busy by the end of 2009, and we decided to add second location (still food truck) in Barton Springs Rd in 2010. This is when Také finally stepped down to part-time chef and contributed most of his time to this business.
Soon enough, we were able to save enough money to start small brick and mortar found the reasonable spot to start “Kome Sushi Kitchen” in 2011. In Oct 2011, we had opened the door and since then, we never went out there to look for real estate or got eager to open more stores but we were fortunate enough to be asked to open different concepts in Austin and by 2019, we had five different concepts, six restaurants throughout the town.
Unfortunately, we need to shut down two of them because of pandemic, but we were preparing to bring back “Sushi A Go Go” in Austin Bergstrom airport very soon.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Many people told me, “it sounds very hard to raise kids and start businesses same time” or “Wow, I could not do all these if I were you….” Of course did not get enough sleep, maybe did not get to go to parks with kids as we should but whole experience of cooking, serving and communicating with people through our business has been really rewarding and worth it.
So I never felt the struggles.
As you know, we’re big fans of Komé Sushi Kitchen. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Komé Sushi Kitchen is the full service Japanese restaurant where we serve authentic, some traditional yet has the influence of our life itself, the roots of growing up in Japan and living here in US throughout our life.
My husband and I started this restaurant like larger version of our own dining table with friends and family.
So it is very important to keep our food as affordable possible to let more people to share our food culture and give comfortable and casual ambiance to cater anyone who wants to try our food.
I also value to have our team ( employees ) as my family so they can serve the closest style and philosophy that I would serve to every one of our guests.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Good luck was I had two beautiful kids while I was working more than full time and aiming our goals so I did not lose my humanity part and when I felt tired, these kids’ existence pushed me to go more and try harder. I did not want to call “bad luck” but the fact we were not rich enough to start brick and mortar from the beginning kept us to be patient and start to small.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@kome-austin.com
- Website: www.kome-austin.com
- Instagram: @komeaustin
- Facebook: @komesushikitchen
- Yelp: Komé
