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