June 28, 2025 • 30 mins
The 4th of July edition of San Pedro Fish Market's World Famous Shrimp Tray features a limited-time BBQ Tray(Long Beach location only). This delicious platter brings the best of a backyard cookout. Believe us when we say this place is worth it.
Website- SanPedroFish.com
Website- SanPedroFish.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Neil Savedra.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
You're listening to kfi EM six forty the four Report
on demand on the iHeartRadio app. How do you do
something about summertime? Just you know, backyard grilling, going out
to eat, just enjoying the weather. All of these things
come together in one. And maybe it's because I'm a
summer baby. I was born in the summer, so the
(00:22):
summer months are always special to me. But just really,
you start thinking about how luckily we are to be
so close to the ocean, great seafood, great fish, and
if you think about those things, you cannot you cannot
be in southern California and not think about San Pedro Fish.
So you can check them out if you want to
(00:44):
find out more about them at San pedrofish dot com
San pedrofish dot com. And here to talk about what
they've got going on for the summer and for the
fourth July is Michael Angaro. How are you, brother, I'm great, Thanks,
welcome to the show. Yeah, we're just talking cigars.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Are you a married man? I am? Okay, So look
at it is.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Uh into the cigar. Her asthma does not agree with I.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Was gonna say so, how do you do it?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Man, I have a few hiding places. Yeah, and I
really open it back.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yard and then you have to wear like a space
helmet in the house. So yeah, I stopped years ago.
It was never a cigarette smoker. I don't think I've
ever had a cigarette.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
In my whole life.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
But cigars, they're they're really nice. With a nice port
or something.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh yeah, you know, or some basils, basil Hiden's.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I just some Luxado cherries.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Oh no, a little bit of a little bit of
the yeah, yeah, for the syrup in there.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Good to go.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Nothing like buying uh, you know, cherries for twenty five
dollars jar. It's like, uh, but you know that you
work hard in life and you want to have Yeah,
I have some nice things. So you and I understand
each other already. How's everything going out there? It's sant Peter.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh, it's going pretty well. Do you know like our situation.
We haven't for quite a bit. I think we did
a zoom during the pandemic. Indeed, we did, so it
has been a while. Yeah, but it's going well in
the last So just a quick background. So next year
we're going to be celebrating our seventieth anniversary started nineteen
fifty six on my grandfather opened the original location called
(02:16):
this the Seafood nineteen fifty nine, moved down to the waterfront,
took over a 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 Peter
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
(02:38):
doing about two million customers a year, more than anyone
except SeaWorld. And then they're but they're redeveloping again. So
Portscal'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 (02:55):
While do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
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 (03:05):
How do you sign a forty nine year lease.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, that's what everybody asks me. So we believe in
the brand. You know, I'm third generation going on force.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well no, I know that part, but just that I
don't know. It just is mind boggling, you know, of
course the brand.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
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 own, even though we have to build it from
the ground up and we don't own the land. So
(03:38):
it 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 (03:53):
Why you guys so beloved.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
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 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.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Me too, you know. So that's exactly why I'm here
on a Saturday too.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It's like, yeah, I think we need to remind ourselves
about what we lived well, work so hard.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
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 a tourist attraction really, and it seefood experience is
(04:41):
what we call it. So what we're doing is we're
redesigning that. We hired an architecture firm called Studios. They
I assume you've been to Italy at some point. Yeah,
of course, So they designed Italy's And what we realized
is what we what we had evolved into by accident.
As we're getting busier and busier and busiers. We had
all these stations that we just would build, you know,
but put a kitchen out there. We need a the kitchen.
Put a kitchen here, take half the crab, a live
(05:02):
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. Go buy your seafood here, bring
it to a kitchen there. I tell you haven't to cook.
Someone else waits on line for beer, someone else gets
the fish and chips, 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
(05:24):
a very ineffective version or an efficient version of what
Italy is, which is a lot of different places to
get your your protein, your side, your sandwich, whatever. 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 square foot restaurant which we planned open next summer. Wow,
(05:44):
so it works. We're we're on the rise, we're expanding.
I carry the one. Yeah, I will not be it wet,
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 Demile.
Two months later we opened and a pop up parking
(06:05):
lot was seating for nine hundred, serving about five hundred
to six hundred thousand people out of that. Holy so
and we had to really pivot and what was so
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
(06:27):
do this was QR codes on the table, scan and
we'll 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
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
(06:48):
kind of brought back about maybe three months ago, where
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.
So in between the forty nine your release 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, right right on the waterfront. We're going
(07:08):
to open that. I'm hoping we'll be able to use
it for Fourth of Jolly weekend. We're just trying to
get through building and safety. But that is incredible. This
is thirty three thousand square feet. We use a 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
(07:28):
kitchen of just griddles and friars walk in freezers, refrigerators,
and then there we use another container that's a bar
and then it's just all DG just basically all like sand.
That is what it looks like right with We could
probably get up to eighteen hundred seats on it and
it's right on the water. We're just but it's been
hard to open it because no one is building in
safety and when you go it's just temporary. Well rebuild
(07:50):
it's like thirty days ninety days. Now we need like
three to five years and there's no box to check.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
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. Look at
you throwing around d G deco decomposed. Look at that.
Sorry Saturday, you learned things on this show. Sorry if
(08:16):
you expected not to today, but you did. But it's
beautiful to look at too. It's like bright.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
It did really nice.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
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 absorbs it. It would be much more. It's just
much more people friendly.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
That's cool. We come back.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
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
it's imperative. Hey, Kayla, she's reaching for the food. Next segment.
(09:01):
She's always hungry. We're gonna keep reaching.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I just wish you go to commercial break so that
I could get some great I don't know, I kind
of like talking still.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Any who.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
All right, Kala's hungry. We'll be back with more stick around.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savedra on
demand from KFI A M six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
How do you do hanging out with Michael Angaro San
Pedro Fish Market. You can find out more at San
Pedrofish dot com, San pedrofish dot Com, where she 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. But I
(09:46):
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 and it's
(10:10):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Ye oh, you were trying something new to this.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
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
(10:45):
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 tray,
you just won't be able to get this specific one.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
This is insanely good.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
It's really good.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It's like.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Everything you could possibly want in one tray and then
the bread even.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
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 2 (11:22):
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
(11:42):
do it right, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's 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 3 (11:53):
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
(12:15):
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.
(12:36):
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.
(12:57):
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 2 (13:19):
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 3 (13:36):
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
(13:58):
part about it was we 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
(14:20):
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,
(14:41):
is this what everyone's waiting the line for. They had
no idea this is what we're serving.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
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 sometimes.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
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 one 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 be able to
(15:14):
offer something in their backyard.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Here's the fork reporter.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I suppose always nice to see you, my friend, and
I'm glad that things are going so well. The growth,
all of those things are always exciting.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Again.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
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
got to see this.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Also Amazon Prime, you can watch our TV show called Kingfish.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Oh, I forgot to mention I had that note as well.
How's that going?
Speaker 3 (16:03):
It's going on? I think Amazon doesn't share a lot
of data with us, but it's still. Oh, 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 aren't.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
To get this.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
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. But this
is only available at July fourth through the sixth, and
just you pull ash sausage, pulled pork corn on the cob, coleslaw,
(16:52):
the garlic bread of course, homemade Carolina gold barbecue sauce
on the side. Just fantastic. The flavors are just spot
on and Mary with every note in there, i'd you
like it.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Nice to see you, my friend.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Good to be here.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
You're listening to the Fork Report with Nil Sevadra on
demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
We are coming sliding out of June and into July.
Can you believe it? That is happening?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And I'm always joke about how the minute you hit summer,
we're in the holidays and everybody goes, hey, you're pushing
things along too far. I say, okay, sliding on a
June now. But 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
(17:40):
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 dot com San pedrofish dot com. The
barbecue tray in Long Beach only a veil bowl at
(18:00):
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, Kaylea the same. Yeah,
she's giving me the look like you don't even have
to ask.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
I'm just grateful that he bought to go boxes. Use
I'm going to be eating this. This was so good.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I saw you go Sunday Monday Tuesday, and I figured, oh, yeah,
those are the boxes Lantin names are the boxes? Yeah, No,
it is that the spice even without the sauce on it.
This is just in its own lovely juice as a
spot on.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And 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.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Wow, ready to cook?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
So you got 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 not in it. Yeah, but you can get
there's a whole 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 2 (19:08):
And gold Belly is really it's like the premiere flavors
of all these different areas and they managed to figure
out ways to get the best of the best to
you no matter where you are.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Makes a great Christmas present for everybody.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Oh yeah, the local places like a cake you want
on the East coast or something like cheesecake.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
You know, I get brisket from Texas or ribs from
Kansas City and just send stuff all over insane. Did
you do this?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
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 4 (19:46):
You.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
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 time. You know, we're
still open, we're still here, and then we did. It
was fine, but as interesting, what I'm noticing is a
lot of copycat places popping up from Bakersfield to Inland,
the Empire, to like all over the place, thinking well,
(20:06):
they're not there anymore, so we could sell these world
famous strom trades for ourself. 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 (20:14):
So are they are the names similar enough?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah, they're calling them. They'll call them San Pedro Trays,
San Pedro Famous fish trades 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 to stop first to protect your intellectual property.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Which sucks because people don't understand that.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I want to support these mom and pop places and
help them grow and it helps us. It could be Synergis,
but you've got to do the season desist thing and
try to talk to them, and that's you have to
cereal and you don't want to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
But people don't understand that you will lose your trademark
if you don't defend it exactly right. 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
(21:03):
I've worked for.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yeah, snick, Like I said, next year is going to
be seventy years if I mentioned that, but we are
seventieth 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 series,
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
(21:26):
it launched. And why that significant 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.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Hold that thought.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I just noticed we're up against the clock because it
went so late last time. And then stick around. We
got Michael Longaro with us from San Pedro Fish Market,
the home of the famous trays. So stick around. We'll
talk more when we return. You've been listening to the
Fork Report. You can always hear us live on KFI
(22:00):
AM six forty two to five pm on Saturday and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app. You know, food
just brings us all together. You know, I get the
best compliment ever is people will say, you know, I'm
not a foodie. I don't like to cook nothing, but
I do love it. And you know, listening to the
show because it's positive, it makes me hungry and I
(22:20):
get to hear of interesting people and I'm like, that's
why I do it.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
That's exactly why I do it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And 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
(22:46):
is concerned, 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.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Hey, I'm back.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Look at you. You're like, you know, I run restaurants, man,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
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
in 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 the customers we
(23:25):
talked to that's their two destinations.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
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,
I had to say, we're really not a restaurant at
this point. We're more of a destination seafood experience. And
(23:50):
that's really how we think about ourselves now.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And you know what's interesting that came out of the
the pandemic was people want experiences with their food.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
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 3 (24:23):
And what's interesting that we did again by accident and
we just kind of evolved, is we allow 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,
Cat's Deli US And I was like, how do we
(24:43):
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 high. Sure,
but I was like, we were on Time magazine at CNN,
and 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 testament to the customer fan base that we had,
(25:05):
which is really cool.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, so called trying is only going to go
so far. The consistency of just wanting to serve.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, the hospitality.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
If you remove the hospitality out of the restaurant industry,
it's gone.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
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're supposed to sell tempera and sushi,
but they copied everything we did. And it was like,
(25:42):
you know what, I'm not even going to push back
on it. Because we had so many customers we couldn't handle.
They needed an alternative so they would come back when
it wasn't as crowded, So that 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 didn't know.
(26:02):
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 it so people could see,
like you can be part of the story. You can
come in on we're filming, you could be in the storyline.
Then that's what we're doing now with all of our
(26:23):
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 it.
We ran out of product and you know someone's coming
(26:44):
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 and her company.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
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 generation. It doesn't want
to be slinging fish.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, but you're in control. Yeah, so you want to
own as much as it as you can.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
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 there might be some cans dug in somebody's backyard,
but there's gonna be that much. It's might be twenty
million dollars. You know, it's a 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 one of my my my business partners,
(27:50):
Albert Dwix, great guy in New York, comes in, he goes,
I do a lot of real estate development New York,
but I've never thought about forty nine years on the lease,
Like the way you have to think differently, time horizons
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,
that's impossible, but it was twenty five cents when we started. Yeah,
(28:13):
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 been
a learning experience for us, but that's part of growing
the legacy for the next generations.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
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 3 (28:47):
Yeah, 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 bared through watching The Bear. Hard to watch for
some hard to watch it, yet accurate, especially the whole
everybody told you my whole family's Italian. So I'm watching
it going, yeah, that's Christmas Eve. But it's really accurate
(29:08):
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'll try
to help you, man, Yeah, but they have to really
be on top of the hospitality part of it.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
So yeah, the storytelling brings them in, the hospitality keeps
them coming back.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, it's always always great to spend time with you
and chat.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Man.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I'm glad that things are still going with full Bore
seventy years later. Michael Angaro uh 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
we'll see you again. Man, anything we can do, you
(29:50):
let us know when any of these changes happened. We'll
make sure people.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Know about it.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Appreciate it, Man, great to be here, Thank you, Good
to see you.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savedra on
demand from k f I a M six forty
Hey, it's Neil Savedra.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
You're listening to kfi EM six forty the four Report
on demand on the iHeartRadio app. How do you do
something about summertime? Just you know, backyard grilling, going out
to eat, just enjoying the weather. All of these things
come together in one. And maybe it's because I'm a
summer baby. I was born in the summer, so the
(00:22):
summer months are always special to me. But just really,
you start thinking about how luckily we are to be
so close to the ocean, great seafood, great fish, and
if you think about those things, you cannot you cannot
be in southern California and not think about San Pedro Fish.
So you can check them out if you want to
(00:44):
find out more about them at San pedrofish dot com
San pedrofish dot com. And here to talk about what
they've got going on for the summer and for the
fourth July is Michael Angaro. How are you, brother, I'm great, Thanks,
welcome to the show. Yeah, we're just talking cigars.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Are you a married man? I am? Okay, So look
at it is.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Uh into the cigar. Her asthma does not agree with I.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Was gonna say so, how do you do it?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Man, I have a few hiding places. Yeah, and I
really open it back.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yard and then you have to wear like a space
helmet in the house. So yeah, I stopped years ago.
It was never a cigarette smoker. I don't think I've
ever had a cigarette.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
In my whole life.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
But cigars, they're they're really nice. With a nice port
or something.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh yeah, you know, or some basils, basil Hiden's.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I just some Luxado cherries.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Oh no, a little bit of a little bit of
the yeah, yeah, for the syrup in there.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Good to go.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Nothing like buying uh, you know, cherries for twenty five
dollars jar. It's like, uh, but you know that you
work hard in life and you want to have Yeah,
I have some nice things. So you and I understand
each other already. How's everything going out there? It's sant Peter.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh, it's going pretty well. Do you know like our situation.
We haven't for quite a bit. I think we did
a zoom during the pandemic. Indeed, we did, so it
has been a while. Yeah, but it's going well in
the last So just a quick background. So next year
we're going to be celebrating our seventieth anniversary started nineteen
fifty six on my grandfather opened the original location called
(02:16):
this the Seafood nineteen fifty nine, moved down to the waterfront,
took over a 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 Peter
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
(02:38):
doing about two million customers a year, more than anyone
except SeaWorld. And then they're but they're redeveloping again. So
Portscal'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 (02:55):
While do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
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 (03:05):
How do you sign a forty nine year lease.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, that's what everybody asks me. So we believe in
the brand. You know, I'm third generation going on force.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well no, I know that part, but just that I
don't know. It just is mind boggling, you know, of
course the brand.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
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 own, even though we have to build it from
the ground up and we don't own the land. So
(03:38):
it 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 (03:53):
Why you guys so beloved.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
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 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.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Me too, you know. So that's exactly why I'm here
on a Saturday too.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It's like, yeah, I think we need to remind ourselves
about what we lived well, work so hard.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
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 a tourist attraction really, and it seefood experience is
(04:41):
what we call it. So what we're doing is we're
redesigning that. We hired an architecture firm called Studios. They
I assume you've been to Italy at some point. Yeah,
of course, So they designed Italy's And what we realized
is what we what we had evolved into by accident.
As we're getting busier and busier and busiers. We had
all these stations that we just would build, you know,
but put a kitchen out there. We need a the kitchen.
Put a kitchen here, take half the crab, a live
(05:02):
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. Go buy your seafood here, bring
it to a kitchen there. I tell you haven't to cook.
Someone else waits on line for beer, someone else gets
the fish and chips, 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
(05:24):
a very ineffective version or an efficient version of what
Italy is, which is a lot of different places to
get your your protein, your side, your sandwich, whatever. 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 square foot restaurant which we planned open next summer. Wow,
(05:44):
so it works. We're we're on the rise, we're expanding.
I carry the one. Yeah, I will not be it wet,
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 Demile.
Two months later we opened and a pop up parking
(06:05):
lot was seating for nine hundred, serving about five hundred
to six hundred thousand people out of that. Holy so
and we had to really pivot and what was so
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
(06:27):
do this was QR codes on the table, scan and
we'll 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
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
(06:48):
kind of brought back about maybe three months ago, where
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.
So in between the forty nine your release 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, right right on the waterfront. We're going
(07:08):
to open that. I'm hoping we'll be able to use
it for Fourth of Jolly weekend. We're just trying to
get through building and safety. But that is incredible. This
is thirty three thousand square feet. We use a 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
(07:28):
kitchen of just griddles and friars walk in freezers, refrigerators,
and then there we use another container that's a bar
and then it's just all DG just basically all like sand.
That is what it looks like right with We could
probably get up to eighteen hundred seats on it and
it's right on the water. We're just but it's been
hard to open it because no one is building in
safety and when you go it's just temporary. Well rebuild
(07:50):
it's like thirty days ninety days. Now we need like
three to five years and there's no box to check.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
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. Look at
you throwing around d G deco decomposed. Look at that.
Sorry Saturday, you learned things on this show. Sorry if
(08:16):
you expected not to today, but you did. But it's
beautiful to look at too. It's like bright.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
It did really nice.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
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 absorbs it. It would be much more. It's just
much more people friendly.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
That's cool. We come back.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
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
it's imperative. Hey, Kayla, she's reaching for the food. Next segment.
(09:01):
She's always hungry. We're gonna keep reaching.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I just wish you go to commercial break so that
I could get some great I don't know, I kind
of like talking still.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Any who.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
All right, Kala's hungry. We'll be back with more stick around.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savedra on
demand from KFI A M six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
How do you do hanging out with Michael Angaro San
Pedro Fish Market. You can find out more at San
Pedrofish dot com, San pedrofish dot Com, where she 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. But I
(09:46):
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 and it's
(10:10):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Ye oh, you were trying something new to this.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
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
(10:45):
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 tray,
you just won't be able to get this specific one.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
This is insanely good.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
It's really good.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It's like.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Everything you could possibly want in one tray and then
the bread even.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
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 2 (11:22):
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
(11:42):
do it right, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's 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 3 (11:53):
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
(12:15):
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.
(12:36):
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.
(12:57):
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 2 (13:19):
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 3 (13:36):
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
(13:58):
part about it was we 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
(14:20):
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,
(14:41):
is this what everyone's waiting the line for. They had
no idea this is what we're serving.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
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 sometimes.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
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 one 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 be able to
(15:14):
offer something in their backyard.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Here's the fork reporter.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I suppose always nice to see you, my friend, and
I'm glad that things are going so well. The growth,
all of those things are always exciting.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Again.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
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
got to see this.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Also Amazon Prime, you can watch our TV show called Kingfish.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Oh, I forgot to mention I had that note as well.
How's that going?
Speaker 3 (16:03):
It's going on? I think Amazon doesn't share a lot
of data with us, but it's still. Oh, 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 aren't.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
To get this.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
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. But this
is only available at July fourth through the sixth, and
just you pull ash sausage, pulled pork corn on the cob, coleslaw,
(16:52):
the garlic bread of course, homemade Carolina gold barbecue sauce
on the side. Just fantastic. The flavors are just spot
on and Mary with every note in there, i'd you
like it.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Nice to see you, my friend.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Good to be here.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
You're listening to the Fork Report with Nil Sevadra on
demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
We are coming sliding out of June and into July.
Can you believe it? That is happening?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And I'm always joke about how the minute you hit summer,
we're in the holidays and everybody goes, hey, you're pushing
things along too far. I say, okay, sliding on a
June now. But 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
(17:40):
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 dot com San pedrofish dot com. The
barbecue tray in Long Beach only a veil bowl at
(18:00):
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, Kaylea the same. Yeah,
she's giving me the look like you don't even have
to ask.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
I'm just grateful that he bought to go boxes. Use
I'm going to be eating this. This was so good.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I saw you go Sunday Monday Tuesday, and I figured, oh, yeah,
those are the boxes Lantin names are the boxes? Yeah, No,
it is that the spice even without the sauce on it.
This is just in its own lovely juice as a
spot on.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And 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.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Wow, ready to cook?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
So you got 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 not in it. Yeah, but you can get
there's a whole 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 2 (19:08):
And gold Belly is really it's like the premiere flavors
of all these different areas and they managed to figure
out ways to get the best of the best to
you no matter where you are.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Makes a great Christmas present for everybody.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Oh yeah, the local places like a cake you want
on the East coast or something like cheesecake.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
You know, I get brisket from Texas or ribs from
Kansas City and just send stuff all over insane. Did
you do this?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
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 4 (19:46):
You.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
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 time. You know, we're
still open, we're still here, and then we did. It
was fine, but as interesting, what I'm noticing is a
lot of copycat places popping up from Bakersfield to Inland,
the Empire, to like all over the place, thinking well,
(20:06):
they're not there anymore, so we could sell these world
famous strom trades for ourself. 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 (20:14):
So are they are the names similar enough?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah, they're calling them. They'll call them San Pedro Trays,
San Pedro Famous fish trades 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 to stop first to protect your intellectual property.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Which sucks because people don't understand that.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I want to support these mom and pop places and
help them grow and it helps us. It could be Synergis,
but you've got to do the season desist thing and
try to talk to them, and that's you have to
cereal and you don't want to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
But people don't understand that you will lose your trademark
if you don't defend it exactly right. 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
(21:03):
I've worked for.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yeah, snick, Like I said, next year is going to
be seventy years if I mentioned that, but we are
seventieth 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 series,
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
(21:26):
it launched. And why that significant 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.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Hold that thought.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I just noticed we're up against the clock because it
went so late last time. And then stick around. We
got Michael Longaro with us from San Pedro Fish Market,
the home of the famous trays. So stick around. We'll
talk more when we return. You've been listening to the
Fork Report. You can always hear us live on KFI
(22:00):
AM six forty two to five pm on Saturday and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app. You know, food
just brings us all together. You know, I get the
best compliment ever is people will say, you know, I'm
not a foodie. I don't like to cook nothing, but
I do love it. And you know, listening to the
show because it's positive, it makes me hungry and I
(22:20):
get to hear of interesting people and I'm like, that's
why I do it.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
That's exactly why I do it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And 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
(22:46):
is concerned, 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.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Hey, I'm back.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Look at you. You're like, you know, I run restaurants, man,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
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
in 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 the customers we
(23:25):
talked to that's their two destinations.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
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,
I had to say, we're really not a restaurant at
this point. We're more of a destination seafood experience. And
(23:50):
that's really how we think about ourselves now.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And you know what's interesting that came out of the
the pandemic was people want experiences with their food.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
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 3 (24:23):
And what's interesting that we did again by accident and
we just kind of evolved, is we allow 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,
Cat's Deli US And I was like, how do we
(24:43):
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 high. Sure,
but I was like, we were on Time magazine at CNN,
and 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 testament to the customer fan base that we had,
(25:05):
which is really cool.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, so called trying is only going to go
so far. The consistency of just wanting to serve.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, the hospitality.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
If you remove the hospitality out of the restaurant industry,
it's gone.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
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're supposed to sell tempera and sushi,
but they copied everything we did. And it was like,
(25:42):
you know what, I'm not even going to push back
on it. Because we had so many customers we couldn't handle.
They needed an alternative so they would come back when
it wasn't as crowded, So that 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 didn't know.
(26:02):
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 it so people could see,
like you can be part of the story. You can
come in on we're filming, you could be in the storyline.
Then that's what we're doing now with all of our
(26:23):
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 it.
We ran out of product and you know someone's coming
(26:44):
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 and her company.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
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 generation. It doesn't want
to be slinging fish.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, but you're in control. Yeah, so you want to
own as much as it as you can.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
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 there might be some cans dug in somebody's backyard,
but there's gonna be that much. It's might be twenty
million dollars. You know, it's a 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 one of my my my business partners,
(27:50):
Albert Dwix, great guy in New York, comes in, he goes,
I do a lot of real estate development New York,
but I've never thought about forty nine years on the lease,
Like the way you have to think differently, time horizons
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,
that's impossible, but it was twenty five cents when we started. Yeah,
(28:13):
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 been
a learning experience for us, but that's part of growing
the legacy for the next generations.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
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 3 (28:47):
Yeah, 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 bared through watching The Bear. Hard to watch for
some hard to watch it, yet accurate, especially the whole
everybody told you my whole family's Italian. So I'm watching
it going, yeah, that's Christmas Eve. But it's really accurate
(29:08):
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'll try
to help you, man, Yeah, but they have to really
be on top of the hospitality part of it.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
So yeah, the storytelling brings them in, the hospitality keeps
them coming back.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, it's always always great to spend time with you
and chat.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Man.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I'm glad that things are still going with full Bore
seventy years later. Michael Angaro uh 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
we'll see you again. Man, anything we can do, you
(29:50):
let us know when any of these changes happened. We'll
make sure people.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Know about it.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Appreciate it, Man, great to be here, Thank you, Good
to see you.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You're listening to The Fork Report with Nil Savedra on
demand from k f I a M six forty
The Fork Report w Neil Saavedra News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.