YO! MAN: Rock’n’ Roll, Robots and Reinventing British Dining

From rock’n’roll roadie to conveyor belt sushi empire – the unlikely story of the man who built YO!

In 1997, Simon Woodroffe opened YO! Sushi with £200,000 and a 100-metre conveyor belt. For two weeks, nobody came. By week three, there was a queue around the block that lasted three years.

But Simon’s journey to that moment was anything but conventional. A former roadie and stage designer who worked on Live Aid and built sets for rock legends, he’d been expelled from school, arrested for drugs at nineteen, and served time in a young offenders’ prison. By his early forties, after business failures and divorce, he was nearly broke and wondering if he’d ever amount to anything.

Then came fire-walking. Lunch with a Japanese businessman. A crazy idea. And the decision to risk everything at forty-five.

This is the brutally honest, wildly entertaining story of how Simon created not just one but multiple iconic brands: YO! Sushi, YOTEL and the YO! empire itself. From the Creative Britannia moment of the late 90s to bankruptcy scares, difficult partnerships and becoming an original Dragon on BBC’s Dragons’ Den, Simon holds nothing back about the sleepless nights, mental health struggles, relationship disasters and moments of pure terror when everything hung by a thread.

Whether you’re forty-five and wondering if it’s too late, or nineteen and wondering if it’s possible, YO! MAN proves that the most unlikely journeys often lead to the most extraordinary destinations.