NYC sushi restaurant accuses Wegmans of stealing its concept and trade secrets: lawsuit
A New York City sushi restaurant has claimed that Wegmans stole its concept and trade secrets after proposing a potential business partnership — only to open a similar sushi market inside its Astor Place location, according to a lawsuit against the grocery giant.
Small business owner Yuji Haraguchi is suing Wegmans for allegedly breaching non-disclosure and non-compete agreements after the chain opened its Sakanya fish market inside its Manhattan location just three blocks away from Haraguchi’s Osakana.
Sakanya bears an “uncanny and confusingly similar resemblance” to the small East Village restaurant and fish market — using nearly the same font, according to the suit obtained by Food & Wine.
Haraguchi said Wegman’s fish broker, Culinary Collaboration, began working with Osakana for a potential partnership and signed the NDA and NCA in August 2023 and signed a letter of intent the next month.
“I disclosed all of my trade secrets, practices, and all the financial information,” he wrote in a Change.org petition. “I invited them to come into my store in the East Village and Midtown locations and showed them everything. They even took our sushi class.”
Then in October, Haraguchi learned from a customer that Wegmans opened a sushi counter and fish market inside its Astor Place store.
The customer thought that Osakana had opened a location inside the supermarket and congratulated him, he said.
“That’s how I found out that they secretly opened the identical concept called ‘SAKANAYA’ behind my back,” Haraguchi said, adding that they even used the same font for their logo.
Osakana also established itself as a “Japanese fish market” in marketing and brand language. “Sakanya” means fish market in Japanese.
Haraguchi also claimed that Wegmans used targeted ads for Osakana customers and the ads reached him as well.
“It kept appearing on my personal [Instagram] account every single day,” the restauranter said.
Then on Nov. 20, exactly one month after Wegmans opened Sakanaya, Haraguchi was told Wegmans was no longer interested in a business partnership “without any logical explanation,” he said in the petition.
“That’s how they backed out [of] the deal. They just disappeared,” he wrote.
Haraguchi — who is also the founder of Japanese eateries Okonomi and Yuji Ramen — opened Osakana in 2016 and said he began his businesses from scratch with no money. He employs 15 hard-working staffers at Osakana who rely on the small business to make a living.
“I want the public to know that this is what a multi-billion dollar company did against a minority-owned small business like myself,” he said.
Wegmans did not return a request for comment, but a spokesperson for the company told Food & Wine that the allegations in the lawsuit are “without merit.”
Haraguchi’s petition demanding Wegmans cease operations of Sakanaya has garnered more than 4,000 signatures.
