Tamaya Sushi is expanding beyond its original Gainesville restaurant, with plans to open a second location in Newberry between October and November featuring a new twist on its made-to-order, all-you-can-eat format. The Newberry spot will sit at 14209 W. Newberry Road, Suite A, joining a stretch of West Newberry Road that has become a magnet for new commercial development.
Owner Wen Zhou Qiu told WhatNow that Tamaya Sushi is testing a new way to provide all-you-can-eat sushi at its Gainesville location before bringing the format to Newberry. The Gainesville restaurant, which opened on Archer Road in 2025, describes its offering as unlimited sushi freshly prepared to order, with every roll made after a customer places their order rather than sitting out on a buffet line. The menu spans classic and specialty rolls, nigiri, sashimi, appetizers, soups, salads and other Japanese dishes.
Exactly what the reworked format entails has not been detailed publicly. What is confirmed is that whatever system Qiu lands on in Gainesville will carry over directly to Newberry once that location opens.
A Fast-Growing Suburb Draws a Regional Chain
Tamaya Sushi's own website already lists the Newberry address as coming soon, alongside a third planned location in Clermont at 2430 US-27 #390. Florida Division of Corporations filings show the ownership group registering a sequence of legal entities to match that growth, starting with Tamaya Sushi LLC in 2024, followed by Tamaya Clermont LLC in 2025 and Tamaya Newberry LLC in 2026, according to the Florida Department of State Division of Corporations. Together the filings sketch a brand moving quickly from a single Gainesville storefront toward a small regional chain stretching into Central Florida.
Newberry has become an increasingly attractive target for that kind of expansion. The city's population climbed 65% between 2013 and 2023 to reach 8,503 residents, according to University of Florida economic research reported by Florida Trend, and more recent Census Bureau estimates compiled by USAFacts put the figure at 8,326 by 2025, keeping Newberry as the third-largest municipality in Alachua County behind Gainesville and Alachua. Florida Trend also notes that commercial development along West Newberry Road caters heavily to commuters, many of whom travel roughly 15 miles to jobs at the University of Florida, UF Health Shands Hospital or HCA Florida North Florida Hospital.
Neighboring Newberry Tenants and Gainesville Pricing
The building at 14209 W. Newberry Road is a 7,000-square-foot retail strip near Jonesville, and commercial listings show Tamaya Sushi will share the space with local favorite Mi Apá Latin Café, which occupies Suite B, per a LoopNet listing. That pairing puts the new sushi spot alongside an established draw for foot traffic in a corridor that has been steadily filling in with retail.
Community posts tracking the original Gainesville location say Tamaya Sushi soft-opened at 3102 SW 34th St, Suite C, next to Yummy House, on May 22, 2025. At that debut, the restaurant set an all-you-can-eat pricing structure of $18.99 for lunch, $28.99 for dinner and $38.99 for a deluxe dinner tier, according to a Reddit thread documenting the opening. The same post notes an eight-item-per-order cap meant to keep the kitchen's pacing manageable and cut down on wasted food, a common constraint at made-to-order, all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants.
Raw Fish Rules Loom Over Any Expansion
Any all-you-can-eat raw fish operation in Florida has to answer to state food safety rules regardless of how the ordering system is structured. Under Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation rules enforcing FDA Food Code standards, restaurants serving raw or undercooked fish must ensure parasite destruction through mandated freezing, such as holding fish at -4°F for seven days or -31°F for 15 hours, unless the species is exempt like bigeye or yellowfin tuna, as detailed in a report from the Miami New Times. State inspection protocols separately require restaurants offering raw or undercooked animal products to post explicit consumer advisory notices on both dine-in and takeout menus.
Those requirements apply to any high-volume, made-to-order sushi operation, including whatever adjusted format Tamaya Sushi is piloting in Gainesville ahead of the Newberry rollout. It remains unclear whether the new approach Qiu described involves changes to ordering technology, kitchen pacing, or something else entirely, and the restaurant has not detailed the mechanics beyond confirming the test is underway.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
