Now in its 16th year of business, Ohio-based sushi concept FUSIAN is on a roll.
A 2026 Food On Demand Outstanding Operator, the brand balances an eager embrace of technology to serve its growing off-premises customer base better while preserving the cozy in-house experience guests have come to expect at its seven locations across the Buckeye state.
Stephan Harman, co-founder and CEO, said FUSIAN got its start in 2010 with a single location in downtown Cincinnati, launched by a group of rookie restaurateurs looking to acquaint fellow Ohioans with sushi via a fast-casual model. Over the years, the sales mix has shifted increasingly off-prem, with more than half of orders now coming digitally and about 80 percent of meals leaving restaurants.
Stephan Harman, FUSIAN cofounder and CEO
“Customer intimacy becomes so much harder when you don’t interact with them face to face, so you do rely on technology and feedback loops to really maintain that intimacy when you don’t really have a physical touch point,” Harman said of lessons learned throughout the brand’s off-prem journey. …“You have to be open to innovation and open to evolution.”
FUSIAN’s off-prem ecosystem includes dine-in, to-go, online ordering through its own channels, online ordering for delivery through its own channels, third-party delivery platforms, and catering.
“Fifteen years ago, when we started the business, serving a customer was largely very intimate,” Harman said. …”Given the proliferation of all of these other sales channels that we just mentioned, we had to figure out how to create a brand experience, even if that meal is not being experienced in our restaurant.”
Harman described FUSIAN’s tech stack as diverse, but not abnormally extensive for a relatively small restaurant chain. The brand uses Olo for online ordering, Toast for its point-of-sale system, Thanx for its loyalty program, Restaurant 365 for accounting and ordering, and Ovation for customer feedback.
FUSIAN has worked with Olo for more than a decade, which Harman said was a linchpin for broader online integration, education on market trends and optimization of online ordering. 
“Part of that tech stack integration has become a lot of customer data,” Harman said. “Every guest that comes into our restaurant and or orders online gets a one-question survey.”
Customer feedback proved crucial to operational tweaks and enhancements. As off-prem operations gained momentum, Harman said, the brand made adjustments to optimize the experience for those customers without detracting from the dine-in experience.
“We don’t have a traditional back-of-house, but we basically split our production kitchen into a front-of-house kitchen and a back-of-house kitchen,” Harman said. “So, we have an online fulfillment (area) in all of our restaurants where we might have six people making sushi rolls that you (in-house guests) don’t even interact with.”
Harman credited a stroke of luck for his brand’s primary offering, sushi, being well-suited to delivery — a factor he said gave FUSIAN a head start as customers’ preferences shifted toward off-prem dining.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic spurred similar trends across the industry, FUSIAN began tailoring its to-go packaging for delivery and takeout guests. For sushi rolls, the brand uses bento box-inspired containers containing light-hearted messages, which Harman said provides a surprise-and-delight experience for customers.
“A lot of the brand packaging is not just optimized to serve our specific product, but it’s optimized to replace that in store experience as much as we possibly can, knowing that people’s lives are busy, people eating on the go, people just want a quick meal, but they don’t want to sacrifice health or wellness,” Harman said.
Brand leaders review customer feedback weekly and will continue relying on guest comments to guide operational and menu decisions. Harman said FUSIAN will continue to look to tech to serve guests better, but he emphasized the innovation will not be conducted for the sake of innovation. Rather, all adjustments are made with the end consumer in mind.
“We don’t want to be a hot concept, because, inevitably, when you’re a hot concept, the next year, you’re not on that list,” Harman said. …“No, we’re not looking at drones. No, we’re not looking at DNA microbiome matching. What we are really, really focused on is just being guest-immersed and guest-obsessed.”
The Outstanding Operators Program highlights 20 innovative brands taking creative paths to success with all things off-premises. Each winner receives a $1,000 charitable donation to their organization of choice and will be recognized on-stage at the 2026 Food On Demand Conference. Register today!
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