Benihana (restaurant)
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| Private | |
| Founded | 1964 |
| Founder | Rocky Aoki |
| Headquarters | Aventura, Florida, United States |
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Key people
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Steve Shlemon (President and CEO) |
| Products | Japanese cuisine |
| Revenue |
 US$314M (FY 2010)
|
 US$-7.74M (FY 2010)
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|
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US$-10.0M (FY 2010)
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| Total assets |
US$234M (FY 2010)
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| Total equity |
US$144M (FY 2010)
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| Owner | Angelo, Gordon & Co. |
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Number of employees
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5,000 |
| Divisions | Benihana, Samurai, Haru, RA Sushi |
| Website | www |
Benihana Inc. (Japanese: ?, "Safflower") is an American restaurant company based in Aventura, Florida. It owns or franchises 116 Japanese cuisine restaurants around the world, including its flagship Benihana Teppanyaki brand, as well as the Haru (fusion cuisine) and RA Sushi restaurants. It was founded by Hiroaki Aoki in New York City.
The company was founded in 1964 on West 56th Street in New York City by 25-year-old Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, the father of Steve Aoki and Devon Aoki
Aoki, a wrestler who had qualified for but did not attend the 1960 Summer Olympics, started the restaurant with $10,000 earned from driving an ice cream truck in Harlem. The first restaurant, Benihana of Tokyo, was named for the red Safflower that was the name for the coffee shop owned by his parents in Tokyo.
Aoki's concept was for the meals to be theatrically prepared by a knife-wielding, joke-telling chef at a teppanyaki table surrounded by a wooden eating surface in front of the guests (Teppan meaning "steel grill" or "griddle" and yaki meaning "grilled" or "broiled"). It initially did not do well until early 1965 when Clementine Paddleford of the New York Herald Tribune gave it a rave review. The Beatles and Muhammad Ali were among the celebrities who then descended on the four-table restaurant.
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Wikipedia