San Pedro Fish Market has been in the Ungaro family since it’s founding as Vista Seafood in 1956 by Michael Ungaro’s grandfather, Mackey Ungaro. At seven years old, Michael began his journey in the family-owned and operated business, working at the restaurant through high school until he left to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Communications from the University of Southern California. After university, Ungaro pursued roles in banking, insurance, and business operations before returning to the family business in 2006 as CEO. Under Ungaro’s leadership, San Pedro Fish Market has become a nationally recognized brand in both the restaurant and retail industries. Ungaro is responsible for expanding the restaurant portfolio to encompass 6 restaurants including two San Pedro Fish Market restaurants, three San Pedro Fish Market Grille locations, and The Crusty Crab. Ungaro tells how during the pandemic San Pedro Fish Market, take-out surpassed the fast-casual dine-in numbers and his hit series, KINGS OF FI$H.
FMM: Share the background of San Pedro Fish Market.
San Pedro Fish Market started in 1956 by my grandfather, Mackey Ungaro, his son Henry and Henry’s best friend Tommy Amalfitano. The store was small, only 200 sq/ft. They sold fresh fish the locals in the seaside fishing town of San Pedro. In 1959 that location was moved to the waterfront taking over a small fish market called Norm’s Landing. Here they sold Shrimp Cocktails, Smoked Seafood and live Crab and Lobster. In the late 70’s the entire waterfront was developed and Norm’s was rebuilt, opening doors as San Pedro Fish Market on Good Friday 1982. The new location included a kitchen and dining room along with seating for over 300. Over the decades the business grew and grew and today it is still family owned and operated by the Ungaro and Amalfitano families, but now has seating for 3000 and sits on 55,000 sq/ft.
FWM: San Pedro Fish Market has become one of the top ten most Instagrammed restaurants in the country highlighting their World Famous Shrimp Tray. Why is this such a popular dish?
It’s not just for the Shrimp Tray, but for the opportunity we provide to the customer to design their own trays with any combination of seafood they desire. We see the tray as an empty canvas and we provide the customer with the opportunity paint with any seafood they choose from our fresh case, in any combination and any quantity. What caught us off guard about the Instagram rating and the national recognition that came with it was how, at the time, we weren’t even managing our Instagram page and had barely 1000 followers. This was 100% from our customers geo-tagging themselves and sharing their seafood creations with the world, and making us famous without our knowledge!
FMM: During the pandemic, your take-out surpassed the fast-casual dine-in numbers. Share your philosophy as a CEO of San Pedro Fish Market. How did this translate to your restaurant overcoming challenges during the pandemic?
Our business philosophy is simple and it goes back to the beginning: Treat your employees like family, make sure your customers feel like family, and always take care of your community because they are your family. The pandemic hit and the whole country shut down, we were clear that our mission was not about profit, it was about “HELP”! We had to invent a way to help our employees, customers and community and we did that offering a super discounted version of our world-famous tray. We priced at $19.99 for a family 4 which is just enough to pay our employees and vendors while giving our customers a fantastic family meal for $5 a person. We also donated those trays to as many 1st responders as possible. In all we produced over 15,000 trays in just a few weeks.
“Our plans are to further expand our brand into new cities and states. It turns out we have a very large customer base in both Phoenix and Las Vegas that drive into town to visit us for the day and then drive back! CRAZY!”
FMM: What do you enjoy most being the CEO of San Pedro Fish Market?
My Grandfather Mackey passed away while I was in college, and my father passed when I was 29. To me they were always synonymous with the business because I grew up working there besides them. But my Dad pushed me to college so I could do something else with my life…which I did. I worked in Banking, Insurance and even owned my own restaurant and catering business for a short while. When I returned to work for the family business I found myself in the very unique situation where all of the places I worked and studied business produced a different perspective than anyone else in the organization held. Although I could scale, gut, filet, fry, sauté, clean, scrub, etc., I could also manage our finances, help with insurance liability strategies, and design, craft and launch marketing plans…things no one else could do. My background helped me to lead the business to innovate new lines of business like our retail line in grocery, our e-commerce offers and our social media narratives. These lead us to enjoy double-digit sales growth for over a decade including the opening of 3 new locations! I wasn’t planning to be CEO, but the push my dad gave me to do something else ultimately enabled me to lead the enterprise into a new era of growth that will help to keep the 4th generation of our family employed, continuing on with our grandfather’s legacy of providing an income to our “family”. This is what I enjoy about being CEO- the legacy I’m helping to sustain and pass on!
FMM: Tell us about your award-winning series, KINGS OF FI$H.
As our social media presence grew I started to notice customers talking about us on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Yelp. What immediately stood out was how little our customers knew about us. Some people thought we were a seafood swap meet that rented sections out to vendors, others made assumptions that an employee or family friend was actually an owner or founder. We had completely taken for granted that everyone knew our history the way we did and we were so wrong! It became even more evident when it was announced that the LA Waterfront was going to be redeveloped and we were not going to be part of the new project, nor were we allowed to bid to become one of the developers. I realized we needed a way to tell our story so that’s what we did. We hired television production professionals who had worked on shows popular shows and asked them to produce a web series about our family business. It was an instant success! Not only did it result in a huge immediate jump in sales it brought in new customers from all over the country, it provided a platform to show our relevance to our community and kept our doors opened for businesses during the improvements to the waterfront. It’s something we’re very proud of and continue to produce and share on our kingsoffishtv.com social sites.
FMM: San Pedro Fish Market is celebrating its 65 Anniversary in 2021. Share a few memories.
We hold four Guinness World Records for the Port of Los Angeles Lobsterfest which we started in 1999 and ended in 2017. Three of these records we set in a single day That festival was one of the most physically exhausting projects we ever participated in, but it was also one of the most fulfilling because we did something that no one thought was possible, and we did it EVERY YEAR!!!
In 2011 we were approached to help coordinate a concert stop for the Railroad Revival Tour which Mumford and Sons headlined. We were able to play a pivotal role in the tour stopping in our parking lot and playing live. IT. WAS. AWESOME. Mumford and Sons had just won a Grammy and the concert brought over 10,000 people to our community. We sold a ton of our shrimp to an entirely new set of customers and made the impossible happen again.
These two memories are important to me because my whole life I’ve heard the same thing about San Pedro over and over and over again. The town is located too far away and it’s too isolated to ever be a major draw. Even though Sad Pedro Fish Market is 2nd only to Sea World for paid visits to a seaside attraction…people still said it. For almost 2 decades we sold more lobsters at an outdoor weekend festival than anyone else in the world, even earning 4 Guinness World Records…but people still said you can’t get people into San Pedro. Then we hosted and an Emmy Award- winning musical act…still the same story. These are the memories that define who we are as a family business: we do the impossible and we do it well!
FMM: Tell us about your future plans.
Our plans are to further expand our brand into new cities and states. It turns out we have a very large customer base in both Phoenix and Las Vegas that drive into town to visit us for the day and then drive back! CRAZY! Our plan is to start bringing our World Famous Seafood to our fans and we’re going to explore this in several ways from retail expansion, to e-commerce to virtual kitchens; there has never been more opportunity to build a restaurant brand and we’ve been building all the components to for this for a decade. NOW IT’S TIME TO LAUNCH! We will also be announcing our plans for the rebuild of our Waterfront Location in San Pedro so stay tuned for that!
FMM: Please share your social media links.
Instagram: @sanpedrofish and @spfishgrille
Facebook: @sanpedrofish
Twitter: @sanpedrofish
KINGS of FI$h: www.KingsOfFishTV.com
