Zack: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast, where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation, an operations and guest recovery platform for multi-unit restaurants that gives all the answers without annoying guests with all the questions. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And today we have a legend, a man who knows Instagram, who knows seafood, who knows TV, who knows revenue, who knows how to overcome the odds. His grandfather, in 1956, started Vista Seafood, which then became San Pedro Fish Market, a restaurant that has four Guinness world records top 10 most Instagram restaurants in the United States. He also not only knows how to do restaurants and marketing, but he self-produced King of Fish, an award-winning web series, and he's got more seasons coming out, michael. I mean like from Hollywood to the seafood. I mean like, tell me about it, how do you do all this stuff?

Michael: 1:07

man man, lots and lots of help. I just have the big ideas. I don't. I'm not the, so I'll say it this way I consider myself more of the visionary kind of CEO of the company. Right, I have the bigger vision of where to go, but as far as creating that strategy and executing all those little steps along the way, you need a lot of help.

Michael: 1:26

Yeah, the, the producing the kings of fish series was an idea that I had. Um, because we were pretty good with cat. I would notice, like, um, when we were, we set three guinness world records in a single day on our lobster festival that we used to do. And this, this uh production company came out and they're like hey, um, we heard you're going to do three Guinness World Records in a day. We want to film you. We've done some stuff with you in the past. You guys seem pretty good in front of the camera, but we want to see how your whole family is in front of the camera. And they filmed the whole day, turned it into a sizzle reel and shopped it around. Like it was sort of like a Duck Dynasty version, but with fish, and it was awesome. Like what they put together was awesome, but Duck Dynasty had like sort of bad press, I think, at the time for some reason, so no one wanted to touch it. So they gave it to us and we're looking at it going. Man, there's a whole bunch we could do Because nobody knew who we were.

Michael: 2:13

Nobody knew our story at the time. I was finding out because that's right when social media was starting to become big, and the more we were looking at social media and listening to what people were saying about us, we realized they have no idea who we are. We were going to compare it to like a seafood swap meet in Mexico. We got compared to like you know all kinds of stuff and I thought we could probably self-produce this thing and tell our story and build our brand and push our business into different directions that we can't do inside the four walls of the business. And that's what happened. And when we we put a team together, we created four like five minute episodes with a story arc. We threw it just on our Facebook page, cause at the time we had a lot of. We weren't even paying attention to Instagram at the time, right when we launched. It is when we got that first number five in the top 10 most Instagram restaurants, but it was just our customers geotagging themselves.

Zack: 3:05

Like we didn't even know until I saw it on CNN, no way.

Michael: 3:06

So we were like, well, we have the series coming out at the same time as this came out and we just sort of integrated it all together and we saw this massive, like it was probably a 25, 30% jump in sales for that particular month. And so we're like, okay, well, there's something here. And we just kept kind of playing with it to see what we could do with it. And then, um, during the pandemic, we had kind of given up on producing the show. Um, not because we didn't think of that potential, but but two of the people in this show passed away from covid and both like two of our business partners actually, and it was really unexpected and they were. You know. Know, tommy Jr in particular was a huge part of the show. So no one really felt comfortable doing much after that.

Michael: 3:48

But Pepsi came to us and said, you know, we'll give you some money. We need content. Everyone's at home, because of the pandemic, watching all these streaming channels. Would you be interested? And we sat down with the whole family and our producer, who we were kind of partnered with, and he was really upset because he really liked junior a lot. They're pretty close, like as all of us were, because this might be a really cool way to memorialize who he was and we could create this series and it would be a way to kind of give him a proper send-off and like close up that loop. So we did it and we're ready to launch it all.

Zack: 4:19

And then, as I told you earlier, we got this eviction notice it's like for those people who don't, who haven't had the privilege of going to san pedro fish market which, by the way out, second only to sea world, was like the most uh, if you look at like non-subsidized uh businesses, yeah, the second most visited, uh, rest, not just restaurant, but location, yeah, the west coast, yeah, oh, seaboard, crazy. It is crazy and and you kind of you said, you said the four walls, but san pedro fish market, if you haven't been there, it is like it's it's the disney world of seafood, like you go there and it is a giant outdoor, complex thing. It's like there's a whole system to it. You're I mean tons of these picnic benches. How many people can you seat?

Michael: 5:15

before the eviction and that in that location we could max out at about 3 000 seats and we were on a 55 000 square feet total and and the thing was it's like after the series and things really exploded the what we started to notice was we had fans in every state in the country. It was crazy, but our highest concentration is 100 miles, so that makes you more of an attraction in a restaurant, because typical restaurants less than five. And then we have these big clusters in phoenix and um, las vegas and northern cal, southern cal, that we're driving in for the day and then going back home. That's like a 10 hour round trip. So, like we, we just realized we had something that that businesses didn't have and so, as we were kind of building on that, the series helped a lot. I don't know. It just appeared to us that there was opportunities for us to expand. I think it's okay to talk about this now.

Michael: 6:11

We're in negotiations right now to open a new location on the Monterey Wharf, as a matter of fact, oh, wow so what we're looking at is we're talking to different architects it's not official because we're still negotiating some of the terms, but I mean I'm pretty confident we can work it all out with the city. But we thought this would be a great place to test, and then not really test, but just kind of rebuild. What we know is iconic about the San Pedro location it's not that we're gone right, we got evicted, we're out, it's dirt. We moved into this parking lot next door in San Pedro.

Zack: 6:42

I don't know if you could also say this how much you blew my mind from a parking lot. What were your sales?

Michael: 6:57

Well, yeah, I'll give you like, let me do both. So what San Pedro was doing with those 3,000 seats ranked us number three in the nation for independent restaurants and sales, because we were over $30 million Mind-boggling, yeah. So we're like, well, there's a 20,000 square foot parking lot. That's just 100 yards away. Can we set up shop there? Because it wasn't in the construction schedule for the redevelopment going on. And they're like, yeah, that works. So we rented 32 foot trailers, kitchens, and we thought this might happen. So we were already talking to vendors just in the event that it did. And these are the kind of stuff they use for FEMA trailers. Right, they're fully equipped kitchen that you could bring in and serve thousands of people. So moved them into the parking lot, moved all the tables that we could squeeze in. I think we managed to get almost a thousand seats there, so we're one third of the capacity.

Michael: 7:36

But my nephew, henry Jr, was like our IT guy. We're like you got to figure out a way to serve customers. So we turned on Toast. He found Me and you, which works with Toast for larger venues At the time. Toast couldn't do a thousand seats.

Michael: 7:50

We put QR codes on the tables because we no longer had a fresh fish display. You can't really do that in a parking lot. There are no drains, there's no power. You know everything's portable, like a festival. And good luck getting permits, because you go to the city of LA for a permit. You only could do 90 days, so we needed this to be a year maybe, we didn't know. So there was no box to check for all the bureaucracy that we had to deal with.

Michael: 8:13

So we just reinvented this entire process. And customers come in, they scan a QR code, all of our main dishes show up on their phone. We make them in the kitchen and we run it to them and we turn tables faster. The experience is quicker, the customers are happier, they still have the ocean view and they can get several beers while they're waiting, rather than having to go back and wait in line for one beer, one beer, one beer. So it actually it was all the things we thought we might be able to do that we couldn't do in the old structure. We now tested them. So we're taking all this and we're testing in other areas. So, as we look at the space in Monterey on their sort of fisherman's wharf that is available, it's like a 17,000 square foot, two-story restaurant. It's empty, so we're like we could really take all what was it?

Michael: 8:58

I'm not sure. Was it like a bubble gump? No, no, there is a bubble gump, I think, but it's on the other side, by the aquarium. This is by the convention center, and I think it was a steakhouse for a while. It's been there for quite a bit and we met with the architect that built it and helped empty it when the last tenant left. So we're looking at the thing. Well, this is kind of a blank canvas with an awesome water view. We could take the components that we've tested inside this parking lot right, plus what we knew worked in our legacy locations that we left, and incorporate them into kind of a hybrid that would give you all the experiential like sort of seafood stuff that the customers loved, and then that's what will end up going back into Pedro and rebuild our legacy locations.

Zack: 9:40

That is so cool and you guys did some great revenue out of that. I mean like hearing about going down to a third of the size and yeah, yeah, I didn't answer your question.

Michael: 9:51

I didn't answer your question, I'm sorry. So we went in the parking lot we were doing about. Our run rate for the year was close to 15, not bad still we went from?

Michael: 10:00

I think we went from number number three, to like somewhere in the top 40 in a parking lot. Yeah, but I don't know. You know the the challenge that is. We didn't intend to be there this long, so it's been. It's been over a year now. Right, we're in june. That was single mile last year. So you and the part. There's very little parking right now because of all the construction. That's going to change in a couple of weeks, but we can't. We're not sure like how many. One of the things we noticed over the years is about a third of the customers that came in were first-time customers every day, every day, so we don't know that. The other 70% came and said we think we'll wait and come back when this is all done.

Zack: 10:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael: 10:41

This isn't what I expected. So we're working on some marketing, because we didn't plan to be there this long and we might be there for a few more months. Because of that. Just, we're still jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops. But what we're building is cool. It's like we are, it's already fabricated and done, it just needs to get installed, which is a 60 foot long container kitchen built to spec. That will do everything these rented kitchens do, but there'll be semi-permanent, so they'll plug into utilities. They'll sit on a probably a concrete, I think concrete or asphalt we're doing kind of a combination of both, and you'll have 2000 seats. They'll be right on the water, it'll it'll be temporary, but it can function for three to five years that way. So we can. So we'll be open as we're building the other one and and you know, maybe even longer, maybe we just keep them both. We don't know yet.

Zack: 11:27

That's because that's one of the things about you know, you obviously have the fast casual locations that I visited as well and it was interesting because it was like a it was a different vibe in the in the fast casual locations, but you were still able to to keep like the essence of things. Right, yeah, what's it? How do you keep and I know this is kind of like we're not even going to go into the questions here of the normal podcast, because you have such an interesting story how do you keep the essence of a brand as you're expanding it? Because, especially, I don't think that there's a restaurant in the country that has a more iconic vibe than the San Pedro Fish Market and yet you've been able to keep that, even as you've been expanding into other venues, other areas, parking lots, fast casual. How do you distill it down to the essence? That's great.

Michael: 12:25

Thank you for the compliment. That's very kind of you. Two of the fast casuals we ultimately shut down after COVID One was an original and we still have it, and what you're asking was the big struggle. It's like we tried to duplicate it as much and we realized, well, people want to come down with two or three generations of their family and have this longer experience and fast casual took away from that. So then you have people that came in and go well, I just want to taste it, but the price is a little too high because we didn't want to cut quality by using cheaper fish. And we, you know, we ultimately said then COVID happened, right, all this pandemic stuff, and we just got into the spiral. So we're like, you know what, let's, let's stick, stay away from those, except to our Wilmington location, which had been doing that for decades already and sort of had its own customer base.

Michael: 13:06

And we built our Long Beach location, which was actually a, a Joe's Crap Shack before, and even before that I was a Rusty Pelican, so the building had been around forever. We're familiar with the spot. It's right on the water, and in this case we had a lot of trial and error, you know like, but we we were looking at, we brought in designers. We actually used the uh, the studio mccormick that was the chief designer for all the cheesecake factories really good dude and he came and studied the whole thing and he created, he actually designed the, the grills you're talking about for us that we opened, as well as the long beach location, and the idea behind that was we want people to feel like they're in San Pedro, even though they're not. So that was part of it. So the decor part of it. But then the other thing that we were trying to figure out is how do we translate the experience? And we did it okay in some places and some places we didn't, because there was an existing building and we were very limited on what we could change. So you still have the full seafood display where people can pick out their own seafood and have it cooked, but when you walk in, it looks like a typical restaurant. So the education of trying to tell the customer no, no, no, we can host you and we can seat you and we can serve you or you can have this other experience it was really hard because they didn't understand if they hadn't been to the original location. Now the original location closes. What do we do with all these people? So we started just putting people out with signs going to check out and handing them QR codes and maps go check out Long Beach, because they're already driving a hundred miles, so it's just another 10. And so, all of a sudden, you had this huge influx of people coming into the other locations that we still had open going. Oh, I didn't know this was a thing, and so it jump-started it.

Michael: 14:53

And here's the interesting part about your original question, as you talk to the customer base in both locations. Well, I mean, the original location is gone, but the people that are coming to San Pedroyear-old that's like. I only go there because my parents make me. I really like the new place you built in Long Beach where I have a sunset view, because we don't have that in Pedro. We're facing the opposite direction. We're facing east. I got a sunset view, I got nicer drinks, I got service, but I still have the same world-famous seafood trays. So that's what I was banking on. This is so. That's what I was banking on is like let's, this is how we're going to survive through another generation. Is we're going to upgrade the experience but still have the same great food and that seems to be working pretty well.

Zack: 15:27

And you guys not only have done such a great job of branding yourselves, but it's almost like you've done too good of a job. I mean, I have seen, I have seen food trucks and restaurants that serve. They call it what's called San Pedro style. You've seen that? Yes, Where'd you see it? I have too. I saw it on this food truck and it was like San Pedro style seafood trays yeah, I've seen it in multiple restaurants and a food truck in Las Vegas.

Michael: 15:56

I saw their website, yeah.

Zack: 15:59

It's so interesting that you've created not just like, it's like you're a kleenex, now right, it's like san pedro style fish, it's like, but you guys created that and so I just think, um, I, I this is why I was so excited to have you on, because you've done such a great job at, uh, what normally people would be like okay, yeah, it's, it's just like a, it's a seafood restaurant on the beach. Like, okay, like there's millions of them, but why has San Pedro fish market? Why has your brand?

Michael: 16:31

Yeah, god, such a good question I ask myself this a lot.

Zack: 16:36

Is it just your good looks, Michael I?

Michael: 16:37

mean? What is it? It's definitely not me, because half the people, 75% of the people that meet me, think I'm either John or Henry, which are my brothers. So it's not me.

Michael: 16:46

I'm like invisible. About a year ago we were able to get my uncle, who's one of the founders, right. When my grandfather started it in 1956, he had my dad and his best friend running it, who were 15 at the time, so they passed away. But Tommy the uncle, he's still there, like seven days a week. He's 80 gonna be 82 years old, by the way so we finally got him to sit down. It's like tell us how you got to this point, like papa had you working there and then we're here. But there's this big chunk none of us know about, how we weren't even born.

Michael: 17:17

And he said some really interesting things I didn't know. He said, first of all, when we were rebuilding in the waterfront, san Pedro Fish Market actually didn't come into existence until Good Friday in 1982. So we were a vista. We moved down to the waterfront, took over a place called Norm's Landing and it was like shrimp cocktails it was, I think they had live lobster and crab, they did smoked fish, they had fresh fish, had a few seats outside and the area was getting redeveloped Zach, by the way, it was getting redeveloped in 1978. And we had to leave and work out of a parking lot for a year.

Zack: 17:50

Oh, where have I heard this before?

Michael: 17:53

So this is when I was like 11, you know, and I didn't understand what was happening, but I remember the stress Like I remember the stress. Like I remember my mom sewing our clothes because there was no money. Like we got to cut your corduroy pants off and make shorts, kind of thing. Why am I getting laughed at at school today? So it was like you know they had the whole family was working driving spikes in the building patting the deck. Tommy found all those railroad ties that were discarded they was able to get almost for nothing to build it. He had the old light posts that were outside in that old deck, that were in a junkyard, that were junk that he got and he said we could bolt these down and run light sterns so we have lights. That's like he was doing everything he could to get reopened in a year and in the process of doing that I was saying well, why did you decide to go from this fish market to restaurant?

Michael: 18:36

He goes. Mike, the world was changing. You had McDonald's, you had Jack in the Box. People weren't buying food and cooking at home anymore. They wanted food they could pick up and eat, like a fast food, which was new, like it didn't exist, and so we didn't know what to do.

Michael: 18:51

So we created this fast food area where people could come in and buy fish and chips or burgers, or fish sandwiches, calamari, even a hot dog if you wanted, and you could sit outside or you could bring it home. We're trying to figure out how to compete with that. And he goes the dining room that I opened. It was originally a lot more like Sizzler at the time, if you remember I don't know if you know this, but like Sizzler, we used to go there all the time when I was a kid, after church and you'd go in and you walked over and it had a big menu board and you picked the item you wanted, you ordered at the counter, they gave you a number and you took a table and they would bring the food out to you In the meantime you had a salad bar.

Michael: 19:23

That's my thought on myself. So Tommy had basically duplicated that system, essentially as a fast, casual concept in our dining room, and then he didn't open it for weeks because he just sat in there going I don't know how to run a restaurant, I don't know if this is going to work, and so eventually he opened it. But what I noticed in this story was that he was always trying to figure out what the customer wanted. He wasn't making what he thought would be cool or good idea. It was like he was essentially mimicking what was working on and then trying to design things that the customer base was looking for. So, hey, we opened. Right, we opened a Good Friday. In 1982.

Michael: 20:00

I'm 11 years old El Nino strikes probably the worst El Nino we've had since. It rained all summer, all the seats were outside, everybody mortgaged their house to open this place. No customers. So he's sitting there going oh my God, we got to figure something else out. What are we going to do? So you know, that sparks a whole bunch of new ideas and innovation.

Michael: 20:19

So he had seen a Mexican food restaurant I think it was El Paso Cantina, which is right down the street, literally right where we are right now in the parking lot because I got torn down too ironically, and they were serving something called fajitas. And he goes well, that's interesting, I've never seen this before. It's bell pepper, tomato onions and steak and chicken. But we could do shrimp or fish and we'll make up our own seasoning. And you know what? We'll get red potatoes. I built this whole area to steam crab and lobster. There's nobody here buying it. We'll steam the potatoes, we'll roll them into the walk-in, which is huge because it was designed for a forklift to drive through. We'll roll the potatoes, we'll chill them, we'll cut them up, we'll use some butter, we'll throw it riddle fish, veggies, potatoes, tortillas. You know what the local baker can make garlic bread.

Michael: 21:03

And this thing evolved into what the customers like I've never seen anything like this this giant family style tray of like, basically, shrimp fajitas. And then we opened it up and said you know what, if you want to buy a whole fish, he found some old like rendering tank from a farm and he says we'll run a gas line through it, we'll throw in some mesquite and if you want to spend an extra dollar, we'll put the whole fish on barbecue for you. And this just evolved as the customers were asking. So then the demographics change. Right, we had in the 50s and 60s, you had American, you had Croatian, you started to see some Latino. It became, there was Filipino, there was Samoan, there was Vietnamese. But in the 80s the Latino population really exploded and so they didn't want Red Snapper or Rock Cod from off the Oregon, california coast, they wanted Huanchinangos, which is the Mexican Red Snapper from Mexico.

Michael: 21:52

And we listened and we started buying it. So every time you saw somebody ask for something, we tested it and if it worked, we added more, and added more, and added more. It was really just listening to the customers. So those trays took off and then we told people you can make up your own tray, you can buy any combination of seafood you want. And the last thing that he did before we got evicted was he goes, I'm going to throw sausages and corn in here, come on, that's crazy. And bacon or something like that. And I started seeing all this like kielbasa and corn and the showcase next to the fish and um, it's not bacon, it's the um, that's solid like it's pork, but it's, uh, the bigger chunks, you know, like oh, like the pork belly kind of.

Michael: 22:31

Yeah, it's kind of like a pork belly. So all of a sudden people like that's cool, I'll buy some of that. And all these trays just kept like the more we added these options, the more the trays transformed, but the more popular they became so so he was just always experimenting, always innovating and always looking to see what the customers wanted, and I think that's what happened. So as the customers come in now, they've built so many memories that we actually had a whole team building exercise. A few years ago. I brought in this consultant, which was weird. I've never done that, I had never done that before and the guy was well, I thought it was for marketing help and he ran through an exercise with our team, which is normally five people, but I brought in 30 because I wanted everybody that had been with us for 10, 20 years to give their experience about man, this could take days.

Zack: 23:11

I've never worked with this many people before.

Michael: 23:13

In six hours, we came up with our value proposition, which was celebrating food and family, because it totally encapsulates who we are.

Zack: 23:19

That's so cool.

Michael: 23:22

But having the managers that are really talking to the customers more than anyone else all day long helped to narrow down what it was that we're doing and what was important, and that's become a big part of what we do now and I think that, honing in on what it is that you do, unique and like, your secret ingredient is that connection of people right and this common thread of listening to your customers.

Zack: 23:43

It's just beautiful, man. I love that, michael. So I know that we could sit here and talk for another 10 hours about this, and next time that we're in the same city I want to just like take you out to dinner and just have you tell me stories.

Michael: 23:59

Yeah, I barely scratched the surface on stories, zach, yeah, no, kidding man?

Zack: 24:03

I could only assume. So where can people go to learn more? Check out Kings of Fish. Check out San Pedro. Kings of Fish.

Michael: 24:11

You can go to wwwkingsoffishtvcom. There's also a YouTube page. There's a link to the YouTube page there, but what you'll see on that website is our trailer for the show which will be premiering in August on Amazon Prime, amazon Video Also. Go to sanpedrofishcom and that'll take you to all the different social sites that we have, so you can see what we're up to.

Zack: 24:33

Well, awesome, Well, Michael, for showing us how to turn lemons into $15 million lemonade by listening to your customers. Today's ovation goes to you. Thanks so much for joining us and sharing your story, Michael Appreciate it Good to be here.

Zack: 24:48

Thanks for joining us today. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We're all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two-question, sms-based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at OvationUpcom.