Benihana

• 1. Introduction

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  Benihana began its American life in 1964 with a 25-year-old owner and a bankroll of ten thousand dollars. Hiroaki Aoki, known as Rocky, had earned that money driving an ice cream truck in Harlem. He put it into a small restaurant on West 56th Street in New York City. Today the name belongs to a chain that sells grilled steak and shrimp to diners across several continents. It has been bought, sold, sued over and fought for in court. How did a family business that began in Tokyo turn dinner into a stage show? Why did the company's own founder lose his grip on it? And who owns the name now?

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• 2. Tokyo Roots

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  In 1937, a man named Yunosuke Aoki opened a jazz cafe called Ellington in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo. The cafe did not survive the war. It was destroyed in the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. Aoki started again in 1947 with a coffee shop, and this time he called it Benihana. By 1950 he had added a restaurant on the second floor. Five years later he opened a teppanyaki restaurant across the street. That building is now known as Benihana Bekkan. A Ginza location followed in 1956. It closed in 1997 and was demolished to make way for an office building called the Aoki Tower. The original Bekkan closed on the 27th of December 2025, with plans to reopen somewhere new.

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• 3. Dinner as Theater

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  Teppan means steel grill, and yaki means grilled or broiled. Rocky Aoki built his restaurant around that idea but added a performer. A chef with a knife would cook in front of the guests and tell jokes while he worked. Diners sat around a teppanyaki table with a wooden eating surface wrapped around the cooking area. Aoki was also a wrestler who had qualified for the 1960 Summer Olympics but did not attend. The concept had originated in Japan in the late 1940s, and Benihana introduced it to the United States. The first months were slow. Then, in early 1965, Clementine Paddleford of the New York Herald Tribune published a rave review. The Beatles and Muhammad Ali were among the celebrities who ate at the four-table restaurant. Three years later, the company opened its first location outside New York City, in Chicago.

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• 4. Going Public

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  In 1983, Aoki split eleven American restaurants into a new company, Benihana Inc., and sold 49.1 percent of it to the public. He kept the 39 restaurants outside the United States inside his original company, Benihana of Tokyo. That arrangement planted the seeds of later trouble. The new company also made mistakes of its own. It opened an upscale restaurant called Big Splash and launched a frozen food division named Benihana National Classics. Its stock dove. Shareholders sued over management, and one complaint was that Aoki still privately held restaurants carrying the same name. The two halves partly rejoined in 1995, when Benihana Inc. acquired 17 restaurants from Benihana of Tokyo. Then came 1999, when Aoki pleaded guilty to insider trading.

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• 5. Boardrooms and Courtrooms

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  The 1999 guilty plea threatened to cost Benihana its liquor licenses. To prevent that, Rocky Aoki handed control of both Benihana of Tokyo and Benihana Inc. to a trust. The trust was managed by his children and his personal lawyer. Those children included Steve Aoki and Devon Aoki. Control became a courtroom matter again in 2004. The company issued a class of preferred stock to BFC Financial Corporation to pay for renovations and expansion. The stock diluted Aoki's control, and the family sued. They argued the company had no compelling need for the cash, that other capital was available, and that the terms were onerous. One Benihana director also sat on the board of BFC. The Delaware Court of Chancery upheld the transaction anyway. Aoki died in 2008 at the age of 69. Benihana's legal fights then moved abroad. On the 30th of January 2011, Benihana in Kuwait filed a defamation suit against a blogger who had written about his meal and filmed it.

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• 6. A Family of Brands

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  Benihana did not stay a single-restaurant company. It bought Haru, a restaurant based in New York City, and RA Sushi, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. RA's original four locations were scattered around greater Phoenix, and the chain later spread across the country. Both kept their own names. Benihana owns them, but they run independently and were developed on their own. The company also acquired the Samurai and Kyoto restaurants and folded those into its other brands. At the latest count in the record, Benihana Inc. in Aventura, Florida, owned 68 teppanyaki restaurants, including its flagship brand. Twelve more were franchised in the United States, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. It also owned one Samurai restaurant and 19 RA Sushi restaurants. By sales, it ranks among the largest Asian restaurant chains in the United States.

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• 7. Passing Hands

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  In 2009, Richard C. Stockinger became chief executive, replacing Joel A. Schwartz. In 2010 he also took the title of president after Juan C. Garcia resigned. In 2012, the private equity firm Angelo Gordon and Company agreed to buy Benihana for 296 million dollars. On the 5th of February 2014, the board named Steve Shlemon president and chief executive. Thomas J. Baldwin took both jobs in 2016. He had been a director of Benihana and an advisor to Angelo Gordon, the principal investor. In 2023, the chain explored a sale that might value it at 600 million dollars or more. The deal that arrived was smaller. In February 2024, One Group Hospitality, parent of STK and Kona Grill, paid 365 million dollars in cash. It took 86 Benihana locations and the 19 RA Sushi restaurants. One Group's chief executive, Emanuel Hilario, called Manny, became Benihana's president and chief executive as well.

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• 8. Around the World

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  Benihana's Japanese roots remain visible on the ground in Tokyo. The original Tokyo business is a separate Japanese company, Benihana Inc., written in Japanese as 株式会社 紅花. It owns the Benihana Building in Nihonbashi and the Aoki Tower in Ginza. Abroad, the American company operates or franchises restaurants in the United States, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Romania, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. The list of countries is long. In North America it includes Canada and Mexico, plus El Salvador and Panama. In South America it includes Brazil. In Europe it includes France, Romania, and the United Kingdom. In the Middle East it includes Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Asian locations include India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The Tokyo bank of tables where the Aoki family first served teppanyaki is now waiting for a new address.

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