Ambitious beginning
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on February 26, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Jay Shin stands behind the bar at his newest restaurant, Jay's Sushi and Burger Bar. Now a successful restaurateur, managing four restaurants in two different cities, Jay got his start as a dish washer and hibachi chef.
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Jay in an undated photo stands with his hibachi tools. He polished his skills as a chef by practicing flipping spatulas, forks and knives in his car while sitting at stoplights.
Nowadays, you're likely to see 40-year-old Jay Shin zipping between his Goldsboro-based restaurants in a slick black Maserati, ensuring operations are running smoothly at each restaurant he owns.
More likely than not, you've eaten in his local restaurants, too -- Sumo, two Ninja Hibachi Grill locations and, of course, Jay's Sushi and Burger Bar.
But if you rewind the clock to about two decades ago, you would have likely seen Shin doing something entirely different.
Such as washing dishes.
Such as working brutally long hours to learn his craft.
Such as sitting in his car at every stop light in Atlanta, Ga., flipping and spinning spatulas, forks and knives when the lights were red to perfect his show he put on when he cooked at a hibachi grill.
Shin's journey from a dishwasher hailing from Seoul, South Korea, to a local restaurant magnate is, indeed, super -- just as his license plate says.
Shin bought what would become Sumo in 2008, not knowing much at all about Goldsboro.
"When I bought it, I didn't know how business was," Shin said. "I had kind of an instinct moment. I thought, 'It's a good location.' The owner, I came up here and he showed me around. We started on Spence, and then went over there onto Ash Street, and then took a left on Berkeley, and I saw a lot of McDonald's there, just Wendy's, KFC, there was a Western Sizzlin' there and stuff like that. I thought it was a good location. And then, finally, we went to Lowe's and Chick-Fil-A there on Berkeley. I told him, 'I like here, I want to see more.' And then he said, 'That's it.' I said, 'No, I want to see more of the Goldsboro.' He said again, 'That's it.' I thought he was joking."
Sumo was named Hikari at the time, which translates to "a light."
And that restaurant would become a light that showed Shin his path to success in Goldsboro.
His original plan was to buy the restaurant, make it successful and busy, sell it and return to Atlanta.
"I moved here on February 8 in 2008," Shin said. "It was a quick decision. That time I just made a new menu, new recipes and brought my entire staff from Atlanta. Everybody came up here together."
Eight years later, and Shin is still in Goldsboro, expanding his restaurant portfolio at an astounding rate.
But it took work and dedication.
Shin left Atlanta with his staff at midnight the day before the restaurant opened under his care, arriving in Goldsboro at 8:30 a.m., putting on a fresh set of clothes and opening that same morning.
On the first day Sumo was in business, six people came in to the restaurant throughout the entire day.
"I was shocked. I knew it would be bad, but it was so bad," Shin said. "At lunch time there were two people, and at dinner time there were four people there."
Shin discovered the restaurant he bought was losing thousands of dollars per day -- but the previous owner had never told him.
But he wasn't deterred, and Shin did what he does best -- he made the restaurant successful.
"In six days, we changed the whole menu and redid everything. I put up a new banner that said it was a new staff, a new menu, everything. Then, on Valentine's Day, on February 14 in 2008, we closed at 10 p.m. because we sold everything. Over 200 people came in that day," Shin said. "After that, we were never down. We've never operated at a loss."
Shin changed the name from Hikari to Sumo 10 months later.
Shin came to the United States from Korea on Feb. 8, 2000, exactly eight years to the day before he opened his first restaurant in Goldsboro.
He was working in the Atlanta restaurant scene and attending school, studying during the day and hammering away at his craft by night.
Shin practiced his Hibachi chef shows and honed his talents until they started to draw large crowds -- and other chefs.
"All day, I'd be driving, rolling and flipping and spinning spatulas at red lights," shin said. "I'd come to a red light, stop, practice. Green light, go. Red light, stop, practice. You know, in Atlanta, there's a lot of traffic there. So I took the time to sit there and develop tricks and skills with my utensils. I was always doing it. At 2 a.m., 3 a.m., that's how I got good at it. A year later after I started doing that, I was an expert chef in a Japanese restaurant. I did sushi, I did traditional cuisine inside the kitchen, and then I did the Hibachi table as a master chef, too. I got all kinds of skills and tricks from that. It was like I became better than somebody that had been doing just one of those things for 20 years. I did it just by working hard. After that, all Japanese restaurant owners and chefs in the area came to my restaurant to see my show. They would always try and hire me to train their chefs."
Then, in 2003, a regular customer in a Japanese restaurant Shin was working in learned that Shin was thinking of going back to school to become a chef.
That customer gave Shin advice that would mark what Shin calls the turning point in his life -- the point where Shin refocused his efforts from working in restaurants to owning them.
"He asked me about why I wanted to go back to school," Shin said. "He said, 'Hey Jay, do you know any good chefs?' And I said, 'How about me?' He said, 'No, I'm not joking. I need a chef.' I said, 'I need to learn. I'm fine, I'm glad to learn everything.' And I told him I was going to go back to school to learn a lot more, and he told me, 'Jay, look at these chefs around you. Everybody went to chef school, and they went to a lot of college, and they've won a lot of medals. You are already here. For what? You're definitely going to learn something, but they're not going to give you a break. It's very expensive. After four years, you only have a debt. You'll have a chance for more opportunities, but I don't think it's a good idea.' That was like a -- 'bing!' -- a light bulb going off for me. After that, I focused on the business."
By 2005, Shin had opened a sushi bar restaurant in Athens, Ga. in the downtown area near the University of Georgia.
This is when Shin began working with who is now his current sushi chef at Jay's Sushi and Burger bar in downtown Goldsboro, Koji Kimura.
The two men lived and worked together in the restaurant scene in Atlanta, and just as stone sharpens stone, the two men continually pushed each other to perfect their craft.
"He is a traditional Japanese chef, and I had worked in a Japanese restaurant but it was the first time I had worked with a real, traditional Japanese chef," Shin said. "We used to argue a lot, cause I have the fusion style and he has the traditional style. We were living together in the same apartment, and we would go back and forth about who is better. We have a lot of passion, he and me. So we would argue about what style was better, who was better -- it was a competition."
Kimura eventually got his own restaurant in Atlanta, and the two men kept in touch over the years.
When Shin decided to open a Ninja Hibachi Express location in Greenville, he knew exactly who to call. Kimura agreed to take over, and would come to work at Jay's Sushi and Burger bar when it opened in late 2015.
Shin opened his first Ninja Hibachi Express on Berkeley Boulevard in 2009, and opened a Greenville location in 2012, prior to opening a Wayne Memorial Drive location in 2013.
"A lot of people thought I was stupid for opening the two locations on Berkeley and Wayne Memorial so close together, they thought I couldn't make it with the two restaurants only being one exit apart on the highway," Shin said. "But think about it. The reason why I did that, is because you have a Starbucks right next to Berkeley Mall, and another on Wayne Memorial Drive. You have a McDonald's on both, Bojangles is there too, everything is good. Why? Right place, right product. That's what makes everything work. I thought if they could make it like that, I could, too. Why not?"
Shin has never willingly fired anyone, he says, and his philosophy is to train his staff to where they can run his restaurants even when he is absent.
"A lot of people say, 'How can you handle it?' I cannot handle it. My chefs, my staff and my family does it," Shin said. "I make money from my customers, not from my employees. I'm making money, and I'm sharing."
When someone is hired by Shin, he imparts all the skills he can on them.
"If somebody has experience at an Applebee's or a Chili's, I don't count that. I give them an audition first, and then I look at his attitude," Shin said. "If he is ready to learn, and he has a passion, I tell them they have to be like a dry sponge. You cannot choose to soak up just red water or hot water, you have to just soak it all up. Empty mind. Just like a dry sponge. I don't need your skill. I have a skill. I want them to learn."
With this momentum building underneath Shin's business acumen, he launched his most recent restaurant in downtown Goldsboro.
The restaurant has been an immense hit with the local population, gaining a loyal following nearly instantly.
The design of Jay's Sushi and Burger bar reflects Shin's other specialty, which is restaurant design. He knows how to lay out and decorate a restaurant to produce the most effect work flow for his employees and best dining environment for his customers.
Now, as Shin looks to the future, he has his sights set on nothing less than the entire United States.
He wants to franchise his restaurant.
He is thinking of naming the franchise Ninja Hibachi and Burger, but it is still in the works.
"I'm very excited about all this, still. I have a passion. It's not for the money," Shin said. "I'm just challenging what I can do. I want to test myself, challenge myself."