Long Island restaurants with same name see dip in business after issue at Stony Brook's Kumo

When a restaurant sickens patrons, it expects a dip in business. But in the wake of the incident earlier this month at Kumo Sushi & Steakhouse in Stony Brook, where close to 30 diners were struck by a foodborne illness, the chill has been felt by restaurants that also happen to be named “Kumo.”

Lewis Lin, owner of Kumo Sushi in Plainview and Kumo Sushi Hibachi & Lounge in Bay Shore, said that starting last week “customers started coming in, asking if we were connected to Kumo in Stony Brook, and calling and asking, too.” 

They're not, Linn said but he estimated that business in Bay Shore has been down about 40% and Plainview has been off by a third simply from the misperception that these spots are connected to the Kumo in Stony Brook.

According to state records, Kumo in Stony Brook is owned by Cheung Wah Lam. Not only are the restaurants unrelated, but Lin had long worried about the similar names. He opened in Plainview’s Manetto Hill Plaza in 2006. By the time Lin opened a second location in Bay Shore in 2013 with partner Ming Feng Liu, Kumo Sushi & Steakhouse had come to Stony Brook and another non-related Kumo Sushi was open in Franklin Square.

What worries Lin more than customers with questions are the customers who assume that they know the answer: The wrong answer.

Elyse and Alan Stern have been Kumo Plainview customers for at least 10 years. When Elyse heard the news about Kumo in Stony Brook, she was “pretty distraught.” The Upper Brookville couple showed up for dinner late last week. “I would have expected it to be full on a Thursday night,” she said, “but there weren’t more than four tables occupied.” Elyse said she was relieved to hear from Lin that he had nothing to do with the Stony Brook restaurant.

Lin said that he looked into trademarking the name of his restaurants, but was unable to do so.

Lisa Dvoskin, an attorney with Lamb & Barnosky in Melville who works with restaurants and trademark law, said there are at least nine restaurants named Kumo in New York State. From 2010 to 2021, a Kumo restaurant in Florida secured federal trademark protection for that name, she said, but it is generally difficult to secure and defend such a trademark around names that are not distinctive. "It’s not like Starbucks — that was a name that the owners came up with on their own.” Moreover, she continued, “in this case, the restaurants had slightly different names as well — Kumo Sushi and Kumo Sushi & Steakhouse.”

Beyond the four Kumos on Long Island, in New York State there are two in Brooklyn and one each in Queens, Westchester and Rockland counties. The name means “cloud” in Japanese. Lin named his spots after the restaurant his sister-in-law opened in Hamden, Connecticut, in 2002. That Kumo has closed, but there are at least three unrelated Kumos across the Long Island Sound in Connecticut.