Simon Woodroffe: The YO! Sushi Founder on the First Panel
Simon Woodroffe
Simon Woodroffe spent his early career in the music business, working on staging and set design for touring rock shows, with no background in restaurants at all.
In 1997 he opened the first YO! Sushi in London, importing the Japanese conveyor belt format to Britain and turning a single site into a chain.
YO! Sushi and Yotel
The format did the marketing for it: the belt was the entertainment as much as the service model, and the brand expanded across Britain and then abroad.
Woodroffe went on to found Yotel, a compact hotel concept borrowed from airline cabin design, first placed in airports and later in city centres. He was appointed OBE.
The first series
He was one of the five original dragons in the first series of Dragons' Den in 2005 and left after that run, making him the shortest serving of the original panel.
His own record is a lesson in formats rather than in products: a single restaurant idea that could be repeated became a chain, and the same instinct produced a second business in hotels.
Products Simon Woodroffe backed in the Den
Mycorrhizal Systems
described as land for a truffle farm