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Poised within the shops and attractions of Village Pointe sits Foxy Sushi. While this restaurant is serving up sushi rolls within its main dining room, it also offers a unique alternative: a drive-thru.
This facet is virtually unheard of in relation to sushi because of the association that drive-thru foods are not healthy or high-quality. In addition, the expectation surrounding sushi is that it is slow-service and high-cost. Foxy Sushi is attempting to change those narratives.
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, chef Tom Buder got together with businessmen and friends Shawn Kolterman and Kevin Young. Kolterman, vice president at Kehm Contractors, and Young, president at K & K Masonry, are now co-owners of the restaurant, while Buder is the head chef. The three men saw that restaurants that were able to survive and even thrive during the pandemic were ones that could adapt to carry-out and drive-thru-only dining models.
Tom Buder began his sushi career in Omaha in 1998 at Sushi Ichiban, which has since closed its doors, and was a founder of popular Old Market restaurant Blue Sushi. He exited Blue Sushi just over four years ago to pursue the idea of Foxy Sushi.
“I’ve always tried to come up with an idea to make sushi more easy-access to people. If they really, truly love sushi, they should be able to eat it more often, instead of just birthdays or special gatherings,” Buder said.
Kolterman also explained his roots for the idea. While visiting his brother, who moved to Japan, the two witnessed a man hop out of his van at the beach and pull three trays of sushi out of what they thought were pizza delivery bags. “I turned to Derek and said, ‘we need to do something like that, where we can make sushi more affordable, more part of everyday dining,’ and it just dovetailed right into what Tom was talking about,” Kolterman said.
How is it possible to make sushi to order in a timely enough manner for a drive-thru without sacrificing the quality of the meal? There are three main factors at play.
The first is the size of Foxy Sushi’s menu. The menu features just three appetizers, five sides, and twelve sushi rolls. It is much faster for diners to decide what they would like to eat and for the kitchen to process that order. “If you couldn’t do it fast, it isn’t on the menu,” Buder explained.
The second factor is that their rolls are not intensely complicated. This simplicity ensures that the kitchen staff have the recipes down to a T and can swiftly assemble each dish. Their cocktails and other beverages are also not overly complicated so that they, too, can be easily distributed through the drive-thru and enjoyed at home.
The third factor is that Foxy is not trying to “do it all” in the same way other restaurants are. The presentation of the food and restaurant are in no way sloppy or unprofessional, but preserve the fast-casual vibe that the three men originally sought to bring to the sushi world.
Buder explained that all of these factors mean Foxy Sushi can purchase the same quality of rice, fish, and other ingredients from the same suppliers as sushi restaurants that come with a much higher price tag.
Another way Foxy Sushi has been able to keep its prices low has been to incorporate elements seen in other sushi restaurants in a cost-effective way. “A rule of thumb in the construction industry is that one-third of the cost of a project is your materials, and two-thirds is your labor. Imagine the amount of time and training that goes into Tom learning the art of sushi, and the fancy sushi knives and such. We’ve been able to purchase some appliances that help us control that time cost by doing things faster,” Kolterman explained. Additionally, instead of large statues and fish tanks that take a lot of money to purchase and maintain, which then falls onto customers’ bills, photography taken on a snorkeling adventure by Young is on display. This acts as a pseudo-aquarium so guests can still enjoy an oceanic ambience they are familiar with at other places.
Guests are welcome to Foxy’s dining room or patio space in addition to the drive-thru. The patio is actually larger than the main dining area inside, featuring eight tables in addition to the six indoors. “I think a lot of restaurants will try to cram you in like sardines, because at the end of the day, it’s a numbers game for them,” Kolterman said. He estimates, though, that about seventy percent of the traffic is in the drive-thru, giving them the flexibility to space out their interior elements and making it more comfortable for diners.
The entirely glass storefront gives the restaurant plenty of natural lighting in combination with the paper lamps hanging above each table. A smiling cat figurine greets customers who come into the dining room, often said to bring good luck within Japanese culture. The shiny black tiling on the wall behind the counter highlights the menu overhead, so customers can get the same speed of service as their drive-thru counterparts while enjoying the dining area.
With help from artist Christine Steele of Christine Jean Studios, the team set out to create a mural that stretches across the entirety of the dining room. Spanning from a large wave reminiscent of Katsishika Hokusai’s “Under the Wave off Kanugawa” to their mascot serving up a plate of sushi with Japanese characters spelling out “Foxy Sushi” down the side, the mural features aspects of Japan’s geography that are meant to evoke an authentic dining experience while keeping the feeling of a casual, relaxed meal. “If you do a Japanese restaurant, you have a very traditional Japan, like with temples. You also have cities like Tokyo, very modern, and you have manga, which is the comic book cuteness of Japan. We wanted to play off that,” Buder said.
The group wanted its logo to be family-friendly, something that especially drew in people trying sushi for the first time. The choice of the fox as the logo was an important and involved one for the founding trio. Beyond the mascot being cute, Buder further explained that “a fox is faster than a rabbit, for example, so speed is what the fox represents. And traditionally, the fox is the guardian of all the Zen temples.”
The adorable fox mascot is featured in many spots throughout the restaurant, and the perfect photo opportunity comes in the form of a fox tail, painted by Buder himself, that guests can stand next to and pretend is their own. “A lot of places do angel wings or butterfly wings, so we thought we’d put a fox tail up there. That space worked really well and we’ve had a lot of people post that,” he said.
Kolterman expressed his hope for more Foxy Sushi locations and has lots of ideas for how to make the drive-thru an even more prominent physical presence of the restaurant. As it stands, the drive-thru is placed in a prime spot on the visible side of the building, but does not carry as many of the culturally tied features that the interior does. “We’ve talked about incorporating the shrine structure into the drive-thru in the future, like having a shrine-shaped awning over the window as protection if it is raining or snowing. We have a lot of different ideas about how we would incorporate more elements of that or maybe the fox’s ears into a future design,” Kolterman said.
Foxy Sushi ties speed and health together with its innovative drive-thru, giving health-conscious diners a much-needed option for a fast and frequent dining experience.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
