Hana Group

The global appetite for convenient, high-quality Asian cuisine has never been stronger, and for franchise investors evaluating the food retail sector, one question dominates the research process: which brand combines a proven retail partnership model, international scale, and a low-cost entry point in a way that actually delivers returns? Hana Group, founded in 2012 and headquartered in Levallois Perret, France, answers that question with one of the most distinctive operating structures in the global franchise landscape. Rather than asking franchisees to sign leases, manage build-outs, and navigate the brutal economics of standalone restaurant real estate, Hana Group embeds its kiosk operations inside the world's largest retailers — Walmart, Sam's Club, Whole Foods Market, Costco, Target, Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour, and El Corte Inglès, among others. As of 2024, Hana Group operates nearly 2,000 kiosks across 13 countries, including the USA, UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania. In the United States alone, Hana Group US operates over 400 kiosks across 42 states. The company was acquired by Permira, a global private equity firm, on January 31, 2019, providing institutional-grade capital backing that accelerated the network's growth from roughly 1,000 kiosks at acquisition to nearly 2,000 today. For franchise investors, that growth trajectory — 13 kiosks in 2013 to 1,955 by 2024 — represents one of the most aggressive and sustained unit expansions in the food retail franchise sector during that period, and it forms the foundation of the investment thesis this analysis will evaluate.

The retail sushi and Pan-Asian food segment sits at the intersection of two of the most powerful consumer mega-trends shaping the global food industry: the accelerating demand for healthy, convenient food and the explosive growth of Asian cuisine adoption outside of Asia. The global sushi market was valued at approximately $18.5 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate exceeding 4% through the late 2020s, driven by rising health consciousness among consumers who associate sushi and Japanese cuisine with clean protein, low fat, and fresh ingredients. In France specifically, Hana Group demonstrated the velocity of this demand in 2021 when it was recognized as the fastest-growing company in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods sector with 46% growth in the French market, ranking fifth in value growth nationally that year and generating an additional €62 million in turnover — a performance that surpassed household names like Heineken and Nestlé on the growth metric. The broader retail foodservice model, in which prepared food is embedded within grocery and big-box retail environments rather than operated as standalone restaurants, has proven structurally resilient because it leverages existing consumer traffic patterns rather than competing for destination dining occasions. Retailers themselves are powerful secular tailwinds for this model: major chains globally are actively expanding their fresh food departments to drive basket size, dwell time, and differentiation from e-commerce, making in-store sushi and poké kiosks a strategic priority for retail partners rather than a discretionary tenant. The competitive landscape for in-store sushi retail remains relatively fragmented outside of a handful of scaled operators, giving Hana Group a first-mover advantage with many of the world's top retail chains that is difficult for new entrants to replicate.

The Hana Group franchise investment is structured to be among the most accessible entry points in the food franchise category, a deliberate strategic choice by the company to attract owner-operators rather than passive investors. The franchise fee is $5,000, a figure that stands dramatically below the food franchise category average, where initial franchise fees typically range from $25,000 to $50,000 for quick-service restaurant concepts. The total investment range for a Hana Group franchise spans from $17,270 on the low end to $75,700 on the high end, a spread driven primarily by variables such as kiosk format size, geographic market, and the specific retail partner environment. This investment range is reinforced by the brand's Mai Sushi format data, which indicates a total investment range of $42,000 to $134,000 when accounting for construction, equipment, inventory, and initial operating expenses. One of the most commercially significant features of the Hana Group franchise model is that the company covers rent, utilities, and build-out costs on behalf of franchisees, fundamentally restructuring the cost-of-entry calculus compared to traditional food service franchises where leasehold improvements alone can reach $200,000 to $400,000 before equipment and inventory. For the Mai Sushi brand, royalty rates are calculated as a percentage of gross sales ranging from 13% to 30%, depending on the applicable retail commission structure at each location, and franchisees contribute up to 1% of gross sales toward marketing. The company was acquired by Permira in January 2019, and private equity ownership at this scale typically signals access to institutional financing structures, supply chain optimization capital, and corporate infrastructure that benefits franchisees through improved support and purchasing power. The combination of a $5,000 franchise fee, covered rent and utilities, and a total investment floor of $17,270 positions the Hana Group franchise opportunity as one of the most financially accessible food retail franchises available to investors entering this category.

The daily operating model of a Hana Group franchise is fundamentally different from running a traditional quick-service restaurant, and that distinction is critical for prospective investors to understand before beginning due diligence. Franchisees operate kiosks embedded within major retail environments, meaning foot traffic is generated by the host retailer rather than by independent marketing or destination-driven consumer behavior — a structural advantage that reduces customer acquisition costs to near zero on a daily basis. The in-store chef model, where fresh sushi and Pan-Asian dishes are prepared on-site at the kiosk, is a deliberate operational choice that distinguishes Hana Group from pre-packaged competitors and aligns with retail partners' goals of enhancing the consumer experience within their stores. Staffing requirements are lean relative to conventional restaurant formats, consistent with the kiosk operating model, and franchisees are expected to be engaged, hands-on owners rather than absentee investors. Training is conducted at a Dallas-based training center, where franchisees and their teams receive hands-on instruction covering operations, leadership, customer service, food safety, and quality standards — all designed to ensure franchisees can maintain brand consistency across their kiosk from opening day. Beyond initial training, the company provides dedicated ongoing support from the grand opening onward, including operational expertise, field guidance, and resources throughout all stages of a franchisee's growth. The company operates under multiple brands — Mai Sushi, Genji, Sushi Gourmet, Sushi Market, and Poké Lé Lé — and introduced small-size kiosk formats in 2021, providing franchisees with additional format flexibility depending on the retail environment. The company has also built central kitchens in San Francisco (2019), London (2019), Paris (2021), and Brussels (2021) to support supply chain quality and consistency for franchisees across different geographies.

Item 19 financial performance data is not disclosed in the current Franchise Disclosure Document for Hana Group, which means prospective franchisees cannot access franchisor-reported average revenue per unit, median revenue, or system-wide profit margin figures through the FDD. This is a meaningful data gap that investors must acknowledge: approximately 66% of franchisors now include Item 19 financial performance representations in their FDDs, meaning Hana Group's non-disclosure places it in the minority of franchisors on this transparency dimension. However, the absence of Item 19 disclosure does not preclude a data-informed assessment of the business. One franchisee on record stated they achieved a "good level of profit" over two years of operation, and retail partners including Whole Foods Market have been described as "very satisfied" with the products and services provided by franchisees — signals that suggest at minimum a functional unit-level economics model. The growth from 1,000 kiosks in 2019 to 1,955 by 2024 is perhaps the most telling proxy for unit-level viability: major retailers such as Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, and Sainsbury's do not expand relationships with food vendors unless those kiosks are generating meaningful sales volume and meeting performance benchmarks. The Sainsbury's relationship alone spans over 170 stores under the Sushi Gourmet banner, and the Marks & Spencer partnership covers over 30 stores under the Mai Sushi brand — retailer concentrations that imply Hana Group kiosks are performing sufficiently well that retail partners actively chose to scale the relationship. For investors, the analytical framework in the absence of Item 19 data must rely on these indirect performance signals, along with the investor's own due diligence process, which should include direct conversations with existing franchisees, a detailed review of the FDD, and independent consultation with a franchise attorney before any investment decision is made.

Hana Group's growth trajectory from 2012 to 2025 represents one of the most data-rich case studies in international food retail franchise expansion available in the current market. Starting from 13 kiosks in 2013, the network reached 45 in 2014, 270 in 2015, and 367 in 2016 before the acquisition of Peace Dining Corporation added 200 stores in the USA and UK, bringing the total to 470 kiosks in that same year. The acquisitions of 46 Eat Happy kiosks and 20 Sushi Maki Store kiosks in France in 2017 pushed the network to 534, while the 2018 acquisition of Masao Group in Spain — which included the Sushi Spot and Fish Sushi brands — combined with 100 new Carrefour and El Corte Inglès locations and the first Irish kiosk at Dunnes Stores, brought the total to 785 kiosks. The Permira acquisition year of 2019 marked the 1,000-kiosk milestone, and growth continued through 2022 when the Costco partnership drove the network to 1,400 kiosks, and the Sam's Club partnership in 2023 contributed to 1,496 total. The Netherlands market opened in 2024, bringing the total to 1,955 kiosks, and a Walmart partnership in 2025 is projected to push the count to 1,975. The competitive moat Hana Group has built is anchored in three reinforcing advantages: exclusive embedded relationships with the world's most trafficked retail chains, a multi-brand portfolio (Mai Sushi, Genji, Sushi Gourmet, Sushi Market, Poké Lé Lé) that allows the company to tailor its offering to different retail environments and consumer segments, and a central kitchen infrastructure across four global cities that enables supply chain control and quality consistency at scale. The 2020 launch of Poké Lé Lé as a global brand diversified the portfolio beyond sushi into the fast-growing Hawaiian poké segment, further expanding the addressable revenue per kiosk footprint.

The ideal Hana Group franchisee is a hands-on, owner-operator with the organizational capacity to manage the fast-paced, high-throughput dynamics of a kiosk environment within a major retail setting. The company expects franchisees to be actively engaged in daily operations rather than adopting an absentee management approach, and applicants are required to meet citizenship or residency requirements and pass a drug test, criminal background check, and credit check before being approved. Prior experience in food service or retail operations is advantageous given the operational complexity of on-site food preparation and the expectation of maintaining brand standards within a retail partner's store environment. Franchisees operating in the United States benefit from a network of over 400 kiosks across 42 states, providing a scale advantage in terms of supply chain relationships and peer support that single-location operators in younger franchise systems cannot access. Management teams within Hana Group have been specifically praised by franchisees for actively listening to operational feedback and collaborating on sales improvement strategies — a support dynamic that suggests multi-unit growth potential for franchisees who perform well in their initial locations. The company has also communicated confidence in doubling the size of its business through deeper penetration with existing retail partners alone, without requiring new retailer acquisitions — a forward-looking signal that suggests territory availability within existing partner chains may remain available to franchisees willing to expand their unit count.

For franchise investors conducting serious due diligence in the food retail and Pan-Asian cuisine sector, Hana Group presents an investment thesis grounded in institutional-scale retail partnerships, a dramatically low cost of entry relative to the food franchise category, and a demonstrated international growth trajectory spanning 13 years and 13 countries. The combination of Permira's private equity backing, a nearly 2,000-unit global network, embedded relationships with retailers including Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, Whole Foods Market, Sainsbury's, and Carrefour, and a franchise fee of $5,000 with covered rent and utilities creates a structurally differentiated opportunity compared to conventional food service franchises requiring $300,000 or more in total investment. The absence of Item 19 financial performance disclosure warrants careful independent investigation, and prospective investors should request franchisee contact lists from the FDD, speak with multiple existing operators, and model conservative unit economics before committing capital. PeerSense provides exclusive due diligence data including SBA lending history, FPI score, location maps with Google ratings, FDD financial data, and side-by-side comparison tools that allow investors to benchmark the Hana Group franchise investment against competing concepts across the food retail and kiosk franchise category. The research tools available through PeerSense are specifically designed to close the information gap that exists when franchisors do not disclose Item 19 data, giving investors the independent intelligence they need to make a fully informed capital allocation decision. Explore the complete Hana Group franchise profile on PeerSense to access the full suite of independent franchise intelligence data.