June 28, 2025 • 27 mins
4th of July edition of San Pedro Fish Market’s World Famous Shrimp is here!!!
World Famous Shrimp Tray with Polish sausage, pulled pork, corn on the cob, coleslaw, and garlic bread, all served with BBQ sauce on the side!!
● The limited-time BBQ Tray brings the best of a backyard cookout to one delicious platter
● It’s the perfect meal to enjoy before the Big Bang on the Bay fireworks show, taking place at Alamitos Bay in Long Beach on July 3
● When: The BBQ platter is available July 4-6, 2025
● Where: Long Beach location only (dine-in and takeout)
● Price: $69.99, serves 2-4 people
World Famous Shrimp Tray with Polish sausage, pulled pork, corn on the cob, coleslaw, and garlic bread, all served with BBQ sauce on the side!!
● The limited-time BBQ Tray brings the best of a backyard cookout to one delicious platter
● It’s the perfect meal to enjoy before the Big Bang on the Bay fireworks show, taking place at Alamitos Bay in Long Beach on July 3
● When: The BBQ platter is available July 4-6, 2025
● Where: Long Beach location only (dine-in and takeout)
● Price: $69.99, serves 2-4 people
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You cannot be in southern California and not think about
San Pedro Fish. So uh, you can check them out
if you want to find out more about them at
San Pedro Fish dot com San Pedro fish dot com.
And here to talk about what they've got going on
for the summer and for the fourth July is Michael Angaro.
(00:21):
How are you, brother, I'm great, Thanks, welcome to the show.
We're just talking cigars. Are you a married man?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I am?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Okay, So look at it is uh.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Into the cigar her asthma does not agree with.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I was going to say, so, how do you do it? Man?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I have a few hiding places. Yeah, and I really.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Opened it back guard and then you have to wear
like a space helmet in the house. So yeah, I
stopped years ago. As never a cigarette smoker. I don't
think I've ever had a cigarette in.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
My whole life.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Not But cigars, they're they're really nice with a nice
port or something.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, you know some basils, Basil Hayden's. Yeah, just some
Luxado cherries, Oh no, the off a little bit of.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
The Yeah, for the syrup in there.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You're good to go.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Nothing like buying, you know, cherries for twenty five dollars.
It's but you know that you work hard in life,
you want to have, yeah, some nice things. So you
and I understand each other already. How's everything going out
there in Santpetere.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Oh, it's going pretty well. Do you know like our situation.
We haven't talked for quite a bit. No, I think
we did a zoom during the pandemic. Indeed we did,
so it has been a while. Yeah, but it's going well.
We in the last So just a quick background. So
next year we're going to be celebrating our seventieth anniversary
as nineteen fifty six of my grandfather opened the original
(01:41):
location called This to Seafood nineteen fifty nine, moved down
to the waterfront, took over place called Norms Landing seventy
nine eighty. They expanded the portsical village, so we moved
out of Norms into a parking lot. We're there for
about a year and a half. We rebuilt an open
san Peech to a fish market Good Friday nineteen eighty two,
and then we're just on a streak, just growing, growing, growing.
We expanded up to three thousand seats at one point
(02:03):
doing about two million customers a year more than anyone
except SeaWorld and then they're but they're redeveloping again. So
Portucal's gone, and so we had to leave that building
on March third of twenty twenty three, two years ago,
move into a parking lot again, which is where we're
at now.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
So they're building new places now. The good news is
we we're part of that project. I signed a forty
nine year lease which we will move into soon. We
have to build that from the ground up.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
How do you sign a forty nine year lease.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, that's what everybody asks me. So we believe in
the brand. You know, I'm third generation gone on Force.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well no, I know that part, but just that I
don't know. It's just is mind boggling, you know, of
course the brand.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
If you're getting into, like the financial part of it,
what's challenging is the city and the state. They own
the land. So normally you'd buy the land and then
you can build on it, and you could you can
finance it that way. But when you don't the forty
nine year lease, banks look at it as if it's
like a home. It's like a piece of property that
you even though we have to build it from the
ground up, and we don't own the land, so it
(03:03):
allows us to borrow the money that we need to
build it because it could be a twenty million dollar project.
It's fifty five thousand square feet. Holy and we're gonna
which is what we had before, So we'll we'll go
back to our three thousand seats and we're just basically
going to make it all more efficient and effective than
it ever had been.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Why you guys so beloved.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You know, we take care of our customers, been around
a long time. Our customer base is super loyal. One
of the things we notice now is people come in
and say, hey, I used to come in as a
kid with my parents, and I've got my kid my
parents with me, and they want to re experience in that.
And what we do is we really like celebrating food
and families sort of our value proposition, if you will.
That's what we're all about too, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So that's exactly why I'm here on a Saturday too.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's like, yeah, I think we need to remind ourselves
about what we live. Well, it work so hard, right right,
and and then you know people come down. Usually parties
is three generations. So it's all picnic benches, it's all
right on the water, and they come down there, you know,
and our height, you'd be in line for a good
hour and an hour and a half two hundred yard
long line just to get in the building another hour
before you can actually settle and get your food, and
people drive one hundred miles before the like more of
(04:03):
a tourist attraction really, and seafood experience is what we
call it. So what we're doing is we're redesigning that.
We hired an architecture firm called Studios. I assume you've been.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
To Italy at some point, yeah, of course, So they
designed Italy's And what we realized is what we had
evolved into by accident as we were getting busier and
busier and buzziers. We had all these stations that we
just would build, you know, put it, put a kitchen
out there, we need another kitchen. Put a kitchen here,
take half the crab, a live crab and lobster tanks
out and replace it with griddles and so that worked,
but it wasn't very efficient, but the experience was there,
(04:34):
Go buy your seafood here, bring it to a kitchen there,
tell you haven't to cook. Someone else waits on line
for beer. Someone else gets the fish and chip, someone
else gets the crab. It worked, but it wasn't really efficient.
It was effective, but it was efficient. So Studios we
realized that would be a great firm to hire because
what we accidentally created was a very ineffective version or
innefficient version of what Italy is, which is a lot
of different places to get your protein, your side, your sandwich, whatever.
(04:58):
So they're bringing that experience back in the first place
you'll find it is on the Fisherman's War from Monterey Bay.
I just signed a thirty year lease for a location there,
seventeen thousand Squareclow restaurant, which we planned open next summer.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Wow, so it works.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
We're on the rise, we're expanding.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Let me carry the one. Yeah, I will not be
it wet.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But that's that's part of it. So back to the
original question. What we did was we left the original
buildings March third to twenty twenty three sink of the mile.
Two months later we opened and a pop up parking
lot was seating for nine hundred serving about five hundred
to six hundred thousand people. Out of that holy so smoke,
and we had to really pivot and what was so
(05:39):
the terrible parts right, you're watching these buildings we grew
up and get torn down. The plus is that allowed
us to start from the ground up and do all
the things we couldn't incorporate into that old structure, like
a lot of technology. So the only way we could
do this was QR codes on the table, scan and
will run the food to you. Not what we envisioned doing,
but we gave it a shot and people are like, hey,
I don't have to wait in six different lines. You're
(06:00):
just going to keep bringing the food and the beer
to meat. Great, and we were able to actually be
a lot more efficient that way. So we'll have some
of that technology in the new locations, but really the
goal is bringing back the seafood experience, which we just
kind of brought back about maybe three months ago. We
didn't have a fish market built into a parking lot,
but we figured out how to do that, and we'll
figure out how to do it in the next phase.
(06:21):
So in between the forty nine year lease and the
parking lot we're in now is what we call Phase two,
and that's a dirt lot that's sort of right between
the two places, but right on the waterfront. We're going
to open that. I'm hoping we'll be able to use
it for fourth of the Jolly weekend. We're just trying
to get through building and safe really, but that is incredible.
This is thirty three thousand square feet. We use a
(06:43):
company called MKUSA that does container kitchens, so they fashioned
this entire kitchen complex about twenty five hundred to three
thousand square feet in size. It's got a sixty foot
long kitchen of just griddles and flyers, walk in freezers, refrigerators,
and then we use another candard that's a bar and
then it's just all DG just basically all like sand.
(07:04):
That's what it looks like right with uh. We could
probably get up to eighteen hundred seats on it and
it's right on the water which is but it's been
hard to open it because no one is building in safety.
When you go it's just temporary or rebuild. It's like
thirty days ninety days. Now we need like three to
five years and there's no box to check.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
So like running around building and safety for two years
and fire and health and everybody else. But they've been great.
They've they've accommodated everything. It's just unique. I don't think
anyone's done that before. Wow, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Look at you thrown around, d G decomposed, look at that.
Sorry Saturday, you learned things on this show. Sorry if
you expected not to today, but you did. But it's
beautiful to look at too. It's like bright.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
It is really nice. Yeah. I mean if you feel
like you're you're in the park, but it's not sand. Yeah,
but it has some similar concept, but it drains. It's
easy to maintain and it reflects. It doesn't like you're
an asshalt right now. So the heat just bounces right
off and it's it's hard this this that it would
be much more. It's just much more people friendly.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
That's cool. We come back. We're going to talk about
your barbecue tray and stuff you're doing for the upcoming holiday.
But I just wanted us to catch up because it
had been so long and there's so much going on.
You guys continue to grow, and we need to keep
these heritage places. Man, it's imperative. Hey, Kayla, she's reaching
(08:24):
for the food. I want to talk hanging out with
Michael Angaro, the San Pedro Fish Market. You can find
out more at San pedrofish dot com. San pedrofish dot
com where he brought so much food and it smells fantastic.
But I gotta tell you, I usually wait till I'm
on the air to eat, so my reaction is right there.
(08:46):
But I couldn't that that that, you know, just this,
The wonderful smell of this is it's very, very enticing,
and I had to just jump in, so I did
bad host. And this is your barbecue tray. It's available
July fourth through the sixth. It is in Long Beach
(09:10):
and it's sixty nine ninety nine. It's so what am
I looking at? What part of this is that tray?
I'm a little bit of heat on it. Ye oh,
you were trying something new to this.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I haven't actually tried it yet, so I just saw it.
I only saw it on our social media. So it's
pulled pork, there's a cubosa sausage, and then it's our
normal shrimp tray, which is a veggies potatoes, you know,
belot of po tomato onions, shrimp, there's corn on the cob.
And then what we added to this that makes it
unique is because in the spirit of barbecuing, and fourth
of July is the pulled pork and this Carolina honey
(09:45):
barbecue sauce, which I actually hadn't tried to write. Now
it's really good. It's a great it's a great accompaniment
to this, and it brings out the flavor in a
different way. So it's awesome. And yeah, it's gonna be
only available on the fourth, fifth, and the sixth, only
in the Long Beach location, so if you don't, if
you go to Pedro, you can still get great trays.
You just be able to get this specific one.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
This is insanely good.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, it's really good. It's like.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Everything you could possibly want in one tray, and then
the bread even.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And it's a great deal too. I mean, easily feed
four people with this. I mean, unless you're super hungry,
I guess you could take your time for two, but
I would.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
You could easily listen. Can I deal with it myself? Yeah,
I'm not. Yeah, even craft Mac and Cheese says that
I'm a family of four, so so I get it.
But just the balance in flavor of all these things
come together, I mean I'm not surprised. You guys just
(10:42):
do it. Right, yeah, thank you. You know it is
the best of the best. I mean, the top is
the highest tier that you can think about when it
comes to seafood. Is what you get at San Pedro.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Are things always been to let the customer pick out
their own seafood and make their own trays. And I
think it was maybe six years ago. My uncle Tommy's
one of the founders. You know, he's still around. I
just passed him when I was leaving with this. He's
I think he's eighty two, eighty three this year. He's
still there. Good on him every day and he's like,
we should put let people buy a sausage, and we
should let people buy a bacon. And then he put
(11:15):
all these things in the fish case, like I don't
know if that's across contamination. I don't sure what we're
doing here, but it was crazy. People started buying it,
and then the corn and the cop which we'd had
corn in the cop forever, but we never offered it
as something you could add to the shrimp tray. So
just moving it into the seafood case all of a sudden,
total selling tons of it, and I'm like, I had
I really didn't see that coming. But that's his thing.
(11:36):
He's always looking at what can we test, what we
can try. Now, we brought in a lot of a
lot of people with the kitchen and back kitchen experience
and restaurant experience from different different companies, and they kind
of looked at it and added a whole different layer
to it, like that pulled pork is something I never
would have thought to try. But we're cooking it ourselves
and then adding it to the train. It's it's really good.
(11:57):
Can I ask where you guys are getting bread from
right now? We're using a local baker that we've used forever,
one of the family places in San Pedro. I'm not
sure fantastic is fantastic? You know, we were talking earlier
about Monterey the challenges. I'm not sure how we're going
to transport it up there. So we're talking to other
bakers and trying to find a match because we have
to find a way to make it available six hours away,
and I don't know how it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, that's tough, especially when you're growing, and you guys
have always seemed to grow properly. You know, you put
push the COVID out because nobody could see that going.
But you know what I'm saying, growing is difficult to
size something that you that people that's beloved.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah, I think that for us, the well, yeah, there's
a lot there. We were fortunate with COVID because the
main location in sant Peedro, all the seating was already outside,
so we just had to move tables apart and put
partitions up and we it gave us an unexpected advantage,
so we still did pretty well once it started to
loosen up. And then you know also and when it
wasn't and you couldn't go in there, we just said
we got to try this third party thing. The funny
(12:58):
part about it was we what we did and this
might have been what we were talking about services, Yeah, yeah,
like door dash and grub up. What we did and
I think this is what we would have been talking
about last time I was here, was we said, you know,
here's the thing. I don't want to we don't want
to make money in the situation, but we got to
keep people employed and we have vendors that need that
we have to buy problem from. So we created a
twenty A nineteen ninety nine twenty dollars basically tray of
(13:20):
our shrimp tray that could feed a family of four,
and we just pushed it through the door Dash and
grub Hub and luber Eats and that worked out really,
really well. And what the funny part about it was
here we are in San Pedro, we've been there forever.
The most of the people in the community didn't visit
us because it's too crowded. They don't want to deal
with the lines. But all of a sudden they're like, Oh,
I'll get it through door Dash or grub Hub, Like,
(13:41):
is this what everyone's waiting the line for. They had
no idea this is what we're serving.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
That's insane. Yeah, that happens a lot, some of the
closest places to me I visit the least. Yeah, it's
just the way you know it can be.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Sometimes. Well it's like you get. One of the things
we would hear is I wouldn't wait in line a
line like this anywhere but Disneyland. So I think that
drives a lot of people away unless they've driven on
it hundred miles. So we have a lot of customers
coming from Phoenix and Vegas for the day going back home.
So that's why we think our Monterey project is going
to be successful because there's a ton of people already
in Monterey that our customers making the drive that we'll
(14:13):
be able to offer something in their backyard.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I'm a huge fan of Disneyland. We have passes and
we go with our family all the time. I'm a
big fan, and I think that there are things worth
waiting for. I don't normally wait and line long lines
for food. I would wait in line for this. Here's
the Fork reporter. I suppose always nice to see you,
my friend, and glad that things are going so well.
(14:37):
The growth, all of those things are always exciting. Again.
The on Facebook, San Pedro Fish website, San Pedro Fish
of course, San Pedro Fish Market is you know, it's
a staple here in southern California. You'll find them the
same on Instagram as well. But check that out. You
gotta see this.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Also Amazon Prime, you can watch our TV show called King. Oh.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I forgot to mention I had that note as well.
How's that going?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It's going on? I think Amazon doesn't share a lot
of data with us, but it's still it's so on
its streaming. It's also we're going to be moving at
the YouTube so we have a little more control. And
you can watch my podcast Fish Factor, which is also
on the San Pego Fish YouTube channel, which we toss
on how we made it and all the background and
who the producers are.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Not I'm sorry I would have plugged that more. Oh,
no worries, but it's good to see you and we
got to do this more often. Man, this is fantastic.
To get this, you want to go check out the
website because they have everything there San pedrofish dot com.
You can look and you can see that they have
their barbecue tray sixty nine ninety nine serves two to
four people depending on if they're me or a normal person.
(15:40):
But this is only available at July fourth through the sixth,
and just you pull a sausage, pulled pork corn on
the cob, coleslaw, the garlic bread of course, homemade Carolina
gold barbecue sauce on the side. Just fantastic. The flavors
are just spot on and with every note in there.
(16:01):
I've asked Michael Longaro from San Pedro Fish Market to
stick around because I totally neglected to talk about some
of the other projects that you've got going on that
people can enjoy the podcast and the TV show and
the like. Plus this food is just so fantastic. A
reminder to check out the website at San Pedro fish
(16:25):
dot com San pedrofish dot com. The barbecue tray in
Long Beach only available at the Long Beach location July
fourth through the sixth. This barbecue tray, it's fantastic, got
my absolute seal of approval. I'm guessing by the look
on your face, Kayla the same. Yeah, she's giving me
(16:46):
the look like you don't even have to ask.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I'm just grateful that he bought to go boxes. I'm
going to be eating this. This was so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I saw you go Sunday Monday Tuesday, and I figured ouh,
yeah of the bus lanting names of the boxes. No,
it is that the spice, even without the sauce on it.
This is just in its own lovely juice is a
spot on And.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
You could also if you go to the website, or
you can go, I think directly to San Pedro dot Fish,
but it'll link from the website too. You can buy
our trays through gold Belly and we ship them all
over the country. Wow, ready to cook? So you got it?
You want to cook? It within a day or two
of receiving it because it's all fresh seafoods and you
can't freeze it because the veggies and potatoes are no notle
run it. Yeah, but you can get there's a whole
(17:32):
bunch of different combinations with crab, lobster, shrimp, fish, and
you can I think there's a couple of additions you
can put on there and we'll ship it anywhere in
the country.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And gold Belly is really it's like the premiere flavors
of all these different areas and they manage to figure
out ways to get the best of the best to
you no matter where you are.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Makes a great Christmas present for everybody.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Oh yeah, the local places like a cake you want
on the East Coast or something like that, cheesecake, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Well, you know, I get brisket from Texas or ribs
from Kansas City, and you just send stuff all over
It's insane. Would you do this?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I'm like, So, it's an honor man, because if your
name is in Thatchol, that's because you have something that
is unique and regional that people want other places.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You speaking of that, when when the news came out
that we were getting the news reported US as being
shut down, they didn't report it for the most part
of us moving so I started. So we had to
do a lot of course correction on that. You know,
we're still open, we're still here, and we did. It
was fine, but it's interesting. What I'm noticing is a
lot of copycat places popping up from Bakersfield to Inland
Empire to like all over the place, thinking well, they're
(18:37):
not there anymore, so we could sell these world famous
Strom trades for ourselves. I'm like, hold on, and people
say I went to your new location in Murrietta, I'm like,
I even know who that is.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So are they Are the names similar enough?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, they're calling them. They'll call them San Pedro Trays,
San Pedro Famous fish trays or shrimp trays. And it's
sad because I own the IP so I would rather
have a way to partner with a lot of these companies,
But the way the laws are written, you have to
tell them the stop first to protect your intellectual property,
which sucks because.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
People don't understand.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I want to support these mom and pop places and
help them grow and it helps us. It could be
synergishal but you've got to do the season the sist
thing and try to talk to them and that's you
have to cereal and you don't want to do it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
But people don't understand that you will lose your trademark
if you don't defend it exactly. And people don't you know,
because I used to do all the trademarking for KFI
as well. Did you really Yeah, I had to, you know,
in my management. I had to cover all that. And
maybe people think that you're just being a big mean
corporation and you're like, no, if I don't do this,
then anybody and everybody gets it, and all the stuff
(19:33):
I've worked for.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah goes snick. Like I said, next year is going
to be seventy years if I mentioned that, but our
SEC anniversary, right, So I was like, I have to
protect the legacy we built. So it's kind of lame,
but it is what it is. You don't have a choice.
But like if we were talking about the web serity,
so if you go to Amazon Prime, you watch it,
go search for Kings of Fish if you don't have
an Amazon Prime. We have actual seven seasons of the
show that started nine years ago. I think today maybe
(19:57):
it launched and and why that signific is we were
only doing for social media's little four minute episodes. Five
minute episodes with the four story arc, the first ones
we came out with in July. I guess it's twenty eighteen,
twenty seventeen, and.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Right now we're hanging out with Michael Angaro from San
Pedro Fish Market and you know they've been around for
seventy years. That to put that in perspective, Disneyland is
celebrating his seventieth right now, now one hundred years of
Walt and his business. But as far as Disneyland is concerned,
(20:31):
so that's you know, so it's pretty pretty Oh, you
can pop your mic on. I'm sorry, bored up, just
stepped away from it here.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I'm back.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Look at you. You're like, you know, I run restaurants, man.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I don't know. I don't. If I wish if I
could just push a button and make them work, I
would everything was a microphone. Yeah, Disney's a cool play.
I mean, we we have We did the study of
just asking people on a survey and it turns out
our customer base that visits us right they're driving one
hundred miles or they're coming in from out of town.
The two places they go is us in Disneyland and
the same like more than sixty or seventy percent of
(21:08):
the customers we talked to that's their two destinations. That's crazy.
We didn't know, you know, but the more you look
at technology and social media allows you to run these polls,
track or we had that at one point one of
the credit card companies we had would give us a
map like thoughts on a map, like here's the clusters
are your customer basis And I was like, wow, that's
one hundred miles we had. We didn't realize that we
were drawing that far out everywhere. Wow, I don't. I mean,
(21:29):
I had to say, we're really not a restaurant at
this point. We're more of a destination seafood experience. And
that's really how we think about ourselves now.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And you know what's interesting that came out of the
the pandemic was people want experiences with their food.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, And that could be whether it's a manufactured experience
of some kind where you're like, hey, this is this
is our vibe or what we you know, kind of
the insides or and what the feel is of it.
And then there's you know what you've built, which is
making outstanding food in a way that's approachable.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And what's interesting that we did again by accident and
we just kind of evolved, is we allowed people to
pick their own combination of seafood and that was the
experience for them. So at one point, and they don't
do this anymore, but Instagram would list the top ten
most Instagram restaurants by geotagging, and we would be in
the top ten. You know, it would be Cafe Dumont,
Kat's Deli Us And I was like, how do we
(22:27):
get in this? But there were so many people that
are like, I can't believe the size of this tray
with all this seafood overflowing, and they were picturing and
showing their friends and family and geotagging, and I think
we had an advantage of three thousand seats over the
other restaurants because you know, the volume of clicks was higher. Sure,
but I was like, we were on Time magazine at CNN.
I'm like, we weren't trying, you know, it was like,
we're just doing what we do. But it was a
really good like testament to the customer fan base that
(22:48):
we had, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
You know, so called trying is only going to go
so far. The consistency of just wanting to serve. Yeah,
the hospitality, if you remove the hospitality out of the
restaurant industry, it's gone.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I think the hospitality and the story are the two
main things. Like if so, we do the best we
can with hospital and we are constantly working to improve
on that. But at the same time, if you had
three seafood restaurants next to each other, which at one
time we did, like when we're in San Pedro, all
these places open next to us and copycass they weren't
supposed to like it was in their least that they
couldn't do it. They were supposed to sell tempera and sushi,
but they copied everything we did. And it was like,
(23:25):
you know what, I'm not even going to push back
on it. Because we had so many customers we couldn't
handle it. They needed an alternative so they would come
back when it wasn't as crowded. So it actually worked
our advantage. But we realized was you could compete against
all of them based on the story that we had
and people didn't know we had been there for decades
and decades they didn't know my grandfather was originally a bookie.
They didn't know that's why he started the business. They
(23:45):
didn't know. They thought, you know, they just thought we
were just random seafood swap meat. So Kings of Fish
evolved out of that. It was a way to not
just tell our story, which we're experimenting on social media,
but actually own it, produce it, and be able to
point it where we wanted to point and so people
could see, like you can be part of the story.
You can come in on more filming, you could be
in the storyline. Then that's what we're doing now with
(24:06):
all of our business partners. It's like anybody that we
buy from, our tech people, our suppliers, we're happy to
include you in, but we do need some help with that,
so we're like looking for them, like if you invest
in the show, you you can be sponsored by or
we can incorporate in the storyline, you know, like Corona
or Modello. Yeah, yeah, you know, I could see us.
I'm flying out. We ran out of product and you know,
(24:28):
someone's coming in with a parachute dropping it off. We
can create any storyline work because we're self producing it,
you know, so it's really fun and it gives us
a place to be creative. And then's for the fourth
generation that's coming up. I don't want to sling fish. Great,
we're also doing this whole media thing. We have a
whole it thing. So my nephew now handles all of
our it. My daughter's our executive assistant. My other daughter
is working. She's actually an executive assistant from Hoda Coppy
(24:50):
and her company. So I'm like, if you ever decide
to come back to California, I could do some help
with the media stuff since you're helping her build her
media brand. So like, it creates opportunities for the next
Sho generation. It doesn't want to be slinging fish.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Isn't it interesting though, how a restaurant business is not
a restaurant business anymore. You have to have your hand
in everything else. Yeah, to remind people, Yeah, but you're
in control.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, so you want to own as much as it
as you can. You know, the expansion gets us into
a situation where you know, we got to borrow money.
Can't to build a fifty five thousand square foot restaurant
that's twenty or thirty million dollars, Not like I there
might be some cans dug in somebody's backyard, but there's
not to be that much. It's neight be twenty million dollars.
You know, it's joking. Yeah, so you got to We
had to bring in people that understand how to finance
restaurants in a different way. And even these guys like
(25:32):
one of my my business partners, Albert Dwex, great guy
in New York, comes in, he goes, I do a
lot of real estate development in New York, but I've never
thought about forty nine years on the lease. Like the
way you have to think differently because the time horizon
so long. The banks don't even know how to think
about it. Even we don't like we have to project out, Okay,
well you get to year thirty, what's the shrimp cocktail cost?
I don't know. It could be fifty dollars with inflation,
(25:53):
that's impossible, but it was twenty five cents when we started. Yeah,
so so to think about those things are much much different.
But again you're not you know, you got to get
outside of the operational part all of that. Yeah. Yeah,
they have a forty nine year projection for for the
investors to think through and I'm like, I don't know
what's going to happen in five minutes, never mind five
years to forty nine, you know. So it's it's it's
been a learning experience for us, but that's part of
(26:15):
growing the legacy for the next generations.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Wow, I'm glad this has been a really fun conversation
just because the insight to all of it. I mean,
you guys already have everything else down the food, that stuff,
but you're constantly learning.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, and and like Fish Factor and Kings of Fish,
they're the way to tell those stories and show people
behind the scenes like I loved, well, I shouldn't say
I loved I beared through watching The Bear.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Hard to watch for so hard to watch it yet,
but pretty.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Accurate, especially the whole time. My whole family's Italian, so
I'm watching it going, yeah, that's Christmas Eve. But it's
really accurate to see, you know, see somebody tell the
behind the scenes story of what the stress is like.
You know, because that customers when they're wait for a
long time, they assume you're just out to get them.
I've tried to help you, man, Yeah, but they have
to really be on top of the hospitality part. Of it. Wow.
(27:05):
So yeah, the storytelling brings him in the hospitality keeps
them coming back.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Well, it's always always great to spend time with you
and chatman. I'm glad that things are still going with
full bore seventy years later, Michael Angaro from the famous
San Pedro Fish Market and you can find out more
at San pedrofish dot com and on all the social media's.
Check out the shows as well as the podcast. And
(27:32):
we'll see you again man, anything we can do, you
let us know when any of these changes happened. We'll
make sure people.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Know about it. Appreciate it, man, great to be here.
Thank you, Good to see you.
You cannot be in southern California and not think about
San Pedro Fish. So uh, you can check them out
if you want to find out more about them at
San Pedro Fish dot com San Pedro fish dot com.
And here to talk about what they've got going on
for the summer and for the fourth July is Michael Angaro.
(00:21):
How are you, brother, I'm great, Thanks, welcome to the show.
We're just talking cigars. Are you a married man?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I am?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Okay, So look at it is uh.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Into the cigar her asthma does not agree with.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I was going to say, so, how do you do it? Man?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I have a few hiding places. Yeah, and I really.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Opened it back guard and then you have to wear
like a space helmet in the house. So yeah, I
stopped years ago. As never a cigarette smoker. I don't
think I've ever had a cigarette in.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
My whole life.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Not But cigars, they're they're really nice with a nice
port or something.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, you know some basils, Basil Hayden's. Yeah, just some
Luxado cherries, Oh no, the off a little bit of.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
The Yeah, for the syrup in there.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You're good to go.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Nothing like buying, you know, cherries for twenty five dollars.
It's but you know that you work hard in life,
you want to have, yeah, some nice things. So you
and I understand each other already. How's everything going out
there in Santpetere.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Oh, it's going pretty well. Do you know like our situation.
We haven't talked for quite a bit. No, I think
we did a zoom during the pandemic. Indeed we did,
so it has been a while. Yeah, but it's going well.
We in the last So just a quick background. So
next year we're going to be celebrating our seventieth anniversary
as nineteen fifty six of my grandfather opened the original
(01:41):
location called This to Seafood nineteen fifty nine, moved down
to the waterfront, took over place called Norms Landing seventy
nine eighty. They expanded the portsical village, so we moved
out of Norms into a parking lot. We're there for
about a year and a half. We rebuilt an open
san Peech to a fish market Good Friday nineteen eighty two,
and then we're just on a streak, just growing, growing, growing.
We expanded up to three thousand seats at one point
(02:03):
doing about two million customers a year more than anyone
except SeaWorld and then they're but they're redeveloping again. So
Portucal's gone, and so we had to leave that building
on March third of twenty twenty three, two years ago,
move into a parking lot again, which is where we're
at now.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
So they're building new places now. The good news is
we we're part of that project. I signed a forty
nine year lease which we will move into soon. We
have to build that from the ground up.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
How do you sign a forty nine year lease.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, that's what everybody asks me. So we believe in
the brand. You know, I'm third generation gone on Force.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well no, I know that part, but just that I
don't know. It's just is mind boggling, you know, of
course the brand.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
If you're getting into, like the financial part of it,
what's challenging is the city and the state. They own
the land. So normally you'd buy the land and then
you can build on it, and you could you can
finance it that way. But when you don't the forty
nine year lease, banks look at it as if it's
like a home. It's like a piece of property that
you even though we have to build it from the
ground up, and we don't own the land, so it
(03:03):
allows us to borrow the money that we need to
build it because it could be a twenty million dollar project.
It's fifty five thousand square feet. Holy and we're gonna
which is what we had before, So we'll we'll go
back to our three thousand seats and we're just basically
going to make it all more efficient and effective than
it ever had been.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Why you guys so beloved.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You know, we take care of our customers, been around
a long time. Our customer base is super loyal. One
of the things we notice now is people come in
and say, hey, I used to come in as a
kid with my parents, and I've got my kid my
parents with me, and they want to re experience in that.
And what we do is we really like celebrating food
and families sort of our value proposition, if you will.
That's what we're all about too, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So that's exactly why I'm here on a Saturday too.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's like, yeah, I think we need to remind ourselves
about what we live. Well, it work so hard, right right,
and and then you know people come down. Usually parties
is three generations. So it's all picnic benches, it's all
right on the water, and they come down there, you know,
and our height, you'd be in line for a good
hour and an hour and a half two hundred yard
long line just to get in the building another hour
before you can actually settle and get your food, and
people drive one hundred miles before the like more of
(04:03):
a tourist attraction really, and seafood experience is what we
call it. So what we're doing is we're redesigning that.
We hired an architecture firm called Studios. I assume you've been.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
To Italy at some point, yeah, of course, So they
designed Italy's And what we realized is what we had
evolved into by accident as we were getting busier and
busier and buzziers. We had all these stations that we
just would build, you know, put it, put a kitchen
out there, we need another kitchen. Put a kitchen here,
take half the crab, a live crab and lobster tanks
out and replace it with griddles and so that worked,
but it wasn't very efficient, but the experience was there,
(04:34):
Go buy your seafood here, bring it to a kitchen there,
tell you haven't to cook. Someone else waits on line
for beer. Someone else gets the fish and chip, someone
else gets the crab. It worked, but it wasn't really efficient.
It was effective, but it was efficient. So Studios we
realized that would be a great firm to hire because
what we accidentally created was a very ineffective version or
innefficient version of what Italy is, which is a lot
of different places to get your protein, your side, your sandwich, whatever.
(04:58):
So they're bringing that experience back in the first place
you'll find it is on the Fisherman's War from Monterey Bay.
I just signed a thirty year lease for a location there,
seventeen thousand Squareclow restaurant, which we planned open next summer.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Wow, so it works.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
We're on the rise, we're expanding.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Let me carry the one. Yeah, I will not be
it wet.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But that's that's part of it. So back to the
original question. What we did was we left the original
buildings March third to twenty twenty three sink of the mile.
Two months later we opened and a pop up parking
lot was seating for nine hundred serving about five hundred
to six hundred thousand people. Out of that holy so smoke,
and we had to really pivot and what was so
(05:39):
the terrible parts right, you're watching these buildings we grew
up and get torn down. The plus is that allowed
us to start from the ground up and do all
the things we couldn't incorporate into that old structure, like
a lot of technology. So the only way we could
do this was QR codes on the table, scan and
will run the food to you. Not what we envisioned doing,
but we gave it a shot and people are like, hey,
I don't have to wait in six different lines. You're
(06:00):
just going to keep bringing the food and the beer
to meat. Great, and we were able to actually be
a lot more efficient that way. So we'll have some
of that technology in the new locations, but really the
goal is bringing back the seafood experience, which we just
kind of brought back about maybe three months ago. We
didn't have a fish market built into a parking lot,
but we figured out how to do that, and we'll
figure out how to do it in the next phase.
(06:21):
So in between the forty nine year lease and the
parking lot we're in now is what we call Phase two,
and that's a dirt lot that's sort of right between
the two places, but right on the waterfront. We're going
to open that. I'm hoping we'll be able to use
it for fourth of the Jolly weekend. We're just trying
to get through building and safe really, but that is incredible.
This is thirty three thousand square feet. We use a
(06:43):
company called MKUSA that does container kitchens, so they fashioned
this entire kitchen complex about twenty five hundred to three
thousand square feet in size. It's got a sixty foot
long kitchen of just griddles and flyers, walk in freezers, refrigerators,
and then we use another candard that's a bar and
then it's just all DG just basically all like sand.
(07:04):
That's what it looks like right with uh. We could
probably get up to eighteen hundred seats on it and
it's right on the water which is but it's been
hard to open it because no one is building in safety.
When you go it's just temporary or rebuild. It's like
thirty days ninety days. Now we need like three to
five years and there's no box to check.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
So like running around building and safety for two years
and fire and health and everybody else. But they've been great.
They've they've accommodated everything. It's just unique. I don't think
anyone's done that before. Wow, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Look at you thrown around, d G decomposed, look at that.
Sorry Saturday, you learned things on this show. Sorry if
you expected not to today, but you did. But it's
beautiful to look at too. It's like bright.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
It is really nice. Yeah. I mean if you feel
like you're you're in the park, but it's not sand. Yeah,
but it has some similar concept, but it drains. It's
easy to maintain and it reflects. It doesn't like you're
an asshalt right now. So the heat just bounces right
off and it's it's hard this this that it would
be much more. It's just much more people friendly.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
That's cool. We come back. We're going to talk about
your barbecue tray and stuff you're doing for the upcoming holiday.
But I just wanted us to catch up because it
had been so long and there's so much going on.
You guys continue to grow, and we need to keep
these heritage places. Man, it's imperative. Hey, Kayla, she's reaching
(08:24):
for the food. I want to talk hanging out with
Michael Angaro, the San Pedro Fish Market. You can find
out more at San pedrofish dot com. San pedrofish dot
com where he brought so much food and it smells fantastic.
But I gotta tell you, I usually wait till I'm
on the air to eat, so my reaction is right there.
(08:46):
But I couldn't that that that, you know, just this,
The wonderful smell of this is it's very, very enticing,
and I had to just jump in, so I did
bad host. And this is your barbecue tray. It's available
July fourth through the sixth. It is in Long Beach
(09:10):
and it's sixty nine ninety nine. It's so what am
I looking at? What part of this is that tray?
I'm a little bit of heat on it. Ye oh,
you were trying something new to this.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I haven't actually tried it yet, so I just saw it.
I only saw it on our social media. So it's
pulled pork, there's a cubosa sausage, and then it's our
normal shrimp tray, which is a veggies potatoes, you know,
belot of po tomato onions, shrimp, there's corn on the cob.
And then what we added to this that makes it
unique is because in the spirit of barbecuing, and fourth
of July is the pulled pork and this Carolina honey
(09:45):
barbecue sauce, which I actually hadn't tried to write. Now
it's really good. It's a great it's a great accompaniment
to this, and it brings out the flavor in a
different way. So it's awesome. And yeah, it's gonna be
only available on the fourth, fifth, and the sixth, only
in the Long Beach location, so if you don't, if
you go to Pedro, you can still get great trays.
You just be able to get this specific one.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
This is insanely good.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, it's really good. It's like.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Everything you could possibly want in one tray, and then
the bread even.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And it's a great deal too. I mean, easily feed
four people with this. I mean, unless you're super hungry,
I guess you could take your time for two, but
I would.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
You could easily listen. Can I deal with it myself? Yeah,
I'm not. Yeah, even craft Mac and Cheese says that
I'm a family of four, so so I get it.
But just the balance in flavor of all these things
come together, I mean I'm not surprised. You guys just
(10:42):
do it. Right, yeah, thank you. You know it is
the best of the best. I mean, the top is
the highest tier that you can think about when it
comes to seafood. Is what you get at San Pedro.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Are things always been to let the customer pick out
their own seafood and make their own trays. And I
think it was maybe six years ago. My uncle Tommy's
one of the founders. You know, he's still around. I
just passed him when I was leaving with this. He's
I think he's eighty two, eighty three this year. He's
still there. Good on him every day and he's like,
we should put let people buy a sausage, and we
should let people buy a bacon. And then he put
(11:15):
all these things in the fish case, like I don't
know if that's across contamination. I don't sure what we're
doing here, but it was crazy. People started buying it,
and then the corn and the cop which we'd had
corn in the cop forever, but we never offered it
as something you could add to the shrimp tray. So
just moving it into the seafood case all of a sudden,
total selling tons of it, and I'm like, I had
I really didn't see that coming. But that's his thing.
(11:36):
He's always looking at what can we test, what we
can try. Now, we brought in a lot of a
lot of people with the kitchen and back kitchen experience
and restaurant experience from different different companies, and they kind
of looked at it and added a whole different layer
to it, like that pulled pork is something I never
would have thought to try. But we're cooking it ourselves
and then adding it to the train. It's it's really good.
(11:57):
Can I ask where you guys are getting bread from
right now? We're using a local baker that we've used forever,
one of the family places in San Pedro. I'm not
sure fantastic is fantastic? You know, we were talking earlier
about Monterey the challenges. I'm not sure how we're going
to transport it up there. So we're talking to other
bakers and trying to find a match because we have
to find a way to make it available six hours away,
and I don't know how it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, that's tough, especially when you're growing, and you guys
have always seemed to grow properly. You know, you put
push the COVID out because nobody could see that going.
But you know what I'm saying, growing is difficult to
size something that you that people that's beloved.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah, I think that for us, the well, yeah, there's
a lot there. We were fortunate with COVID because the
main location in sant Peedro, all the seating was already outside,
so we just had to move tables apart and put
partitions up and we it gave us an unexpected advantage,
so we still did pretty well once it started to
loosen up. And then you know also and when it
wasn't and you couldn't go in there, we just said
we got to try this third party thing. The funny
(12:58):
part about it was we what we did and this
might have been what we were talking about services, Yeah, yeah,
like door dash and grub up. What we did and
I think this is what we would have been talking
about last time I was here, was we said, you know,
here's the thing. I don't want to we don't want
to make money in the situation, but we got to
keep people employed and we have vendors that need that
we have to buy problem from. So we created a
twenty A nineteen ninety nine twenty dollars basically tray of
(13:20):
our shrimp tray that could feed a family of four,
and we just pushed it through the door Dash and
grub Hub and luber Eats and that worked out really,
really well. And what the funny part about it was
here we are in San Pedro, we've been there forever.
The most of the people in the community didn't visit
us because it's too crowded. They don't want to deal
with the lines. But all of a sudden they're like, Oh,
I'll get it through door Dash or grub Hub, Like,
(13:41):
is this what everyone's waiting the line for. They had
no idea this is what we're serving.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
That's insane. Yeah, that happens a lot, some of the
closest places to me I visit the least. Yeah, it's
just the way you know it can be.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Sometimes. Well it's like you get. One of the things
we would hear is I wouldn't wait in line a
line like this anywhere but Disneyland. So I think that
drives a lot of people away unless they've driven on
it hundred miles. So we have a lot of customers
coming from Phoenix and Vegas for the day going back home.
So that's why we think our Monterey project is going
to be successful because there's a ton of people already
in Monterey that our customers making the drive that we'll
(14:13):
be able to offer something in their backyard.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I'm a huge fan of Disneyland. We have passes and
we go with our family all the time. I'm a
big fan, and I think that there are things worth
waiting for. I don't normally wait and line long lines
for food. I would wait in line for this. Here's
the Fork reporter. I suppose always nice to see you,
my friend, and glad that things are going so well.
(14:37):
The growth, all of those things are always exciting. Again.
The on Facebook, San Pedro Fish website, San Pedro Fish
of course, San Pedro Fish Market is you know, it's
a staple here in southern California. You'll find them the
same on Instagram as well. But check that out. You
gotta see this.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Also Amazon Prime, you can watch our TV show called King. Oh.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I forgot to mention I had that note as well.
How's that going?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It's going on? I think Amazon doesn't share a lot
of data with us, but it's still it's so on
its streaming. It's also we're going to be moving at
the YouTube so we have a little more control. And
you can watch my podcast Fish Factor, which is also
on the San Pego Fish YouTube channel, which we toss
on how we made it and all the background and
who the producers are.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Not I'm sorry I would have plugged that more. Oh,
no worries, but it's good to see you and we
got to do this more often. Man, this is fantastic.
To get this, you want to go check out the
website because they have everything there San pedrofish dot com.
You can look and you can see that they have
their barbecue tray sixty nine ninety nine serves two to
four people depending on if they're me or a normal person.
(15:40):
But this is only available at July fourth through the sixth,
and just you pull a sausage, pulled pork corn on
the cob, coleslaw, the garlic bread of course, homemade Carolina
gold barbecue sauce on the side. Just fantastic. The flavors
are just spot on and with every note in there.
(16:01):
I've asked Michael Longaro from San Pedro Fish Market to
stick around because I totally neglected to talk about some
of the other projects that you've got going on that
people can enjoy the podcast and the TV show and
the like. Plus this food is just so fantastic. A
reminder to check out the website at San Pedro fish
(16:25):
dot com San pedrofish dot com. The barbecue tray in
Long Beach only available at the Long Beach location July
fourth through the sixth. This barbecue tray, it's fantastic, got
my absolute seal of approval. I'm guessing by the look
on your face, Kayla the same. Yeah, she's giving me
(16:46):
the look like you don't even have to ask.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I'm just grateful that he bought to go boxes. I'm
going to be eating this. This was so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I saw you go Sunday Monday Tuesday, and I figured ouh,
yeah of the bus lanting names of the boxes. No,
it is that the spice, even without the sauce on it.
This is just in its own lovely juice is a
spot on And.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
You could also if you go to the website, or
you can go, I think directly to San Pedro dot Fish,
but it'll link from the website too. You can buy
our trays through gold Belly and we ship them all
over the country. Wow, ready to cook? So you got it?
You want to cook? It within a day or two
of receiving it because it's all fresh seafoods and you
can't freeze it because the veggies and potatoes are no notle
run it. Yeah, but you can get there's a whole
(17:32):
bunch of different combinations with crab, lobster, shrimp, fish, and
you can I think there's a couple of additions you
can put on there and we'll ship it anywhere in
the country.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And gold Belly is really it's like the premiere flavors
of all these different areas and they manage to figure
out ways to get the best of the best to
you no matter where you are.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Makes a great Christmas present for everybody.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Oh yeah, the local places like a cake you want
on the East Coast or something like that, cheesecake, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Well, you know, I get brisket from Texas or ribs
from Kansas City, and you just send stuff all over
It's insane. Would you do this?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I'm like, So, it's an honor man, because if your
name is in Thatchol, that's because you have something that
is unique and regional that people want other places.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You speaking of that, when when the news came out
that we were getting the news reported US as being
shut down, they didn't report it for the most part
of us moving so I started. So we had to
do a lot of course correction on that. You know,
we're still open, we're still here, and we did. It
was fine, but it's interesting. What I'm noticing is a
lot of copycat places popping up from Bakersfield to Inland
Empire to like all over the place, thinking well, they're
(18:37):
not there anymore, so we could sell these world famous
Strom trades for ourselves. I'm like, hold on, and people
say I went to your new location in Murrietta, I'm like,
I even know who that is.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So are they Are the names similar enough?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, they're calling them. They'll call them San Pedro Trays,
San Pedro Famous fish trays or shrimp trays. And it's
sad because I own the IP so I would rather
have a way to partner with a lot of these companies,
But the way the laws are written, you have to
tell them the stop first to protect your intellectual property,
which sucks because.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
People don't understand.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I want to support these mom and pop places and
help them grow and it helps us. It could be
synergishal but you've got to do the season the sist
thing and try to talk to them and that's you
have to cereal and you don't want to do it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
But people don't understand that you will lose your trademark
if you don't defend it exactly. And people don't you know,
because I used to do all the trademarking for KFI
as well. Did you really Yeah, I had to, you know,
in my management. I had to cover all that. And
maybe people think that you're just being a big mean
corporation and you're like, no, if I don't do this,
then anybody and everybody gets it, and all the stuff
(19:33):
I've worked for.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah goes snick. Like I said, next year is going
to be seventy years if I mentioned that, but our
SEC anniversary, right, So I was like, I have to
protect the legacy we built. So it's kind of lame,
but it is what it is. You don't have a choice.
But like if we were talking about the web serity,
so if you go to Amazon Prime, you watch it,
go search for Kings of Fish if you don't have
an Amazon Prime. We have actual seven seasons of the
show that started nine years ago. I think today maybe
(19:57):
it launched and and why that signific is we were
only doing for social media's little four minute episodes. Five
minute episodes with the four story arc, the first ones
we came out with in July. I guess it's twenty eighteen,
twenty seventeen, and.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Right now we're hanging out with Michael Angaro from San
Pedro Fish Market and you know they've been around for
seventy years. That to put that in perspective, Disneyland is
celebrating his seventieth right now, now one hundred years of
Walt and his business. But as far as Disneyland is concerned,
(20:31):
so that's you know, so it's pretty pretty Oh, you
can pop your mic on. I'm sorry, bored up, just
stepped away from it here.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I'm back.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Look at you. You're like, you know, I run restaurants, man.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I don't know. I don't. If I wish if I
could just push a button and make them work, I
would everything was a microphone. Yeah, Disney's a cool play.
I mean, we we have We did the study of
just asking people on a survey and it turns out
our customer base that visits us right they're driving one
hundred miles or they're coming in from out of town.
The two places they go is us in Disneyland and
the same like more than sixty or seventy percent of
(21:08):
the customers we talked to that's their two destinations. That's crazy.
We didn't know, you know, but the more you look
at technology and social media allows you to run these polls,
track or we had that at one point one of
the credit card companies we had would give us a
map like thoughts on a map, like here's the clusters
are your customer basis And I was like, wow, that's
one hundred miles we had. We didn't realize that we
were drawing that far out everywhere. Wow, I don't. I mean,
(21:29):
I had to say, we're really not a restaurant at
this point. We're more of a destination seafood experience. And
that's really how we think about ourselves now.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And you know what's interesting that came out of the
the pandemic was people want experiences with their food.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, And that could be whether it's a manufactured experience
of some kind where you're like, hey, this is this
is our vibe or what we you know, kind of
the insides or and what the feel is of it.
And then there's you know what you've built, which is
making outstanding food in a way that's approachable.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And what's interesting that we did again by accident and
we just kind of evolved, is we allowed people to
pick their own combination of seafood and that was the
experience for them. So at one point, and they don't
do this anymore, but Instagram would list the top ten
most Instagram restaurants by geotagging, and we would be in
the top ten. You know, it would be Cafe Dumont,
Kat's Deli Us And I was like, how do we
(22:27):
get in this? But there were so many people that
are like, I can't believe the size of this tray
with all this seafood overflowing, and they were picturing and
showing their friends and family and geotagging, and I think
we had an advantage of three thousand seats over the
other restaurants because you know, the volume of clicks was higher. Sure,
but I was like, we were on Time magazine at CNN.
I'm like, we weren't trying, you know, it was like,
we're just doing what we do. But it was a
really good like testament to the customer fan base that
(22:48):
we had, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
You know, so called trying is only going to go
so far. The consistency of just wanting to serve. Yeah,
the hospitality, if you remove the hospitality out of the
restaurant industry, it's gone.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I think the hospitality and the story are the two
main things. Like if so, we do the best we
can with hospital and we are constantly working to improve
on that. But at the same time, if you had
three seafood restaurants next to each other, which at one
time we did, like when we're in San Pedro, all
these places open next to us and copycass they weren't
supposed to like it was in their least that they
couldn't do it. They were supposed to sell tempera and sushi,
but they copied everything we did. And it was like,
(23:25):
you know what, I'm not even going to push back
on it. Because we had so many customers we couldn't
handle it. They needed an alternative so they would come
back when it wasn't as crowded. So it actually worked
our advantage. But we realized was you could compete against
all of them based on the story that we had
and people didn't know we had been there for decades
and decades they didn't know my grandfather was originally a bookie.
They didn't know that's why he started the business. They
(23:45):
didn't know. They thought, you know, they just thought we
were just random seafood swap meat. So Kings of Fish
evolved out of that. It was a way to not
just tell our story, which we're experimenting on social media,
but actually own it, produce it, and be able to
point it where we wanted to point and so people
could see, like you can be part of the story.
You can come in on more filming, you could be
in the storyline. Then that's what we're doing now with
(24:06):
all of our business partners. It's like anybody that we
buy from, our tech people, our suppliers, we're happy to
include you in, but we do need some help with that,
so we're like looking for them, like if you invest
in the show, you you can be sponsored by or
we can incorporate in the storyline, you know, like Corona
or Modello. Yeah, yeah, you know, I could see us.
I'm flying out. We ran out of product and you know,
(24:28):
someone's coming in with a parachute dropping it off. We
can create any storyline work because we're self producing it,
you know, so it's really fun and it gives us
a place to be creative. And then's for the fourth
generation that's coming up. I don't want to sling fish. Great,
we're also doing this whole media thing. We have a
whole it thing. So my nephew now handles all of
our it. My daughter's our executive assistant. My other daughter
is working. She's actually an executive assistant from Hoda Coppy
(24:50):
and her company. So I'm like, if you ever decide
to come back to California, I could do some help
with the media stuff since you're helping her build her
media brand. So like, it creates opportunities for the next
Sho generation. It doesn't want to be slinging fish.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Isn't it interesting though, how a restaurant business is not
a restaurant business anymore. You have to have your hand
in everything else. Yeah, to remind people, Yeah, but you're
in control.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, so you want to own as much as it
as you can. You know, the expansion gets us into
a situation where you know, we got to borrow money.
Can't to build a fifty five thousand square foot restaurant
that's twenty or thirty million dollars, Not like I there
might be some cans dug in somebody's backyard, but there's
not to be that much. It's neight be twenty million dollars.
You know, it's joking. Yeah, so you got to We
had to bring in people that understand how to finance
restaurants in a different way. And even these guys like
(25:32):
one of my my business partners, Albert Dwex, great guy
in New York, comes in, he goes, I do a
lot of real estate development in New York, but I've never
thought about forty nine years on the lease. Like the
way you have to think differently because the time horizon
so long. The banks don't even know how to think
about it. Even we don't like we have to project out, Okay,
well you get to year thirty, what's the shrimp cocktail cost?
I don't know. It could be fifty dollars with inflation,
(25:53):
that's impossible, but it was twenty five cents when we started. Yeah,
so so to think about those things are much much different.
But again you're not you know, you got to get
outside of the operational part all of that. Yeah. Yeah,
they have a forty nine year projection for for the
investors to think through and I'm like, I don't know
what's going to happen in five minutes, never mind five
years to forty nine, you know. So it's it's it's
been a learning experience for us, but that's part of
(26:15):
growing the legacy for the next generations.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Wow, I'm glad this has been a really fun conversation
just because the insight to all of it. I mean,
you guys already have everything else down the food, that stuff,
but you're constantly learning.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, and and like Fish Factor and Kings of Fish,
they're the way to tell those stories and show people
behind the scenes like I loved, well, I shouldn't say
I loved I beared through watching The Bear.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Hard to watch for so hard to watch it yet,
but pretty.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Accurate, especially the whole time. My whole family's Italian, so
I'm watching it going, yeah, that's Christmas Eve. But it's
really accurate to see, you know, see somebody tell the
behind the scenes story of what the stress is like.
You know, because that customers when they're wait for a
long time, they assume you're just out to get them.
I've tried to help you, man, Yeah, but they have
to really be on top of the hospitality part. Of it. Wow.
(27:05):
So yeah, the storytelling brings him in the hospitality keeps
them coming back.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Well, it's always always great to spend time with you
and chatman. I'm glad that things are still going with
full bore seventy years later, Michael Angaro from the famous
San Pedro Fish Market and you can find out more
at San pedrofish dot com and on all the social media's.
Check out the shows as well as the podcast. And
(27:32):
we'll see you again man, anything we can do, you
let us know when any of these changes happened. We'll
make sure people.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Know about it. Appreciate it, man, great to be here.
Thank you, Good to see you.
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