This is the full, lightly edited transcript of episode 355 of the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast, in which Jeremy Julian talks with Michael Ungaro, CEO and co-owner of San Pedro Fish Market and Restaurant. For the summary, key quotes, takeaways and the video and audio players, see the episode page: Why Storytelling Saved San Pedro Fish Market — Michael Ungaro.
Michael’s grandfather started San Pedro Fish Market as a 200-square-foot storefront on the Los Angeles waterfront roughly seventy years ago. At its peak the business ran 3,000 seats across 55,000 square feet and served about two million people a year, drawing customers from a hundred-mile radius and from every state in the country. In this conversation Michael walks through the whole arc: the failed restaurant he opened in Carson in 2004 and what it taught him about marketing, the value-proposition exercise that revealed what guests were actually celebrating, the Food Beast video that brought 30,000 customers in ten days and closed a freeway off-ramp, and the seven-year run of 10% to 14% annual growth that followed once the family started telling its own story on camera — a story that became Kings of Fi$h on Amazon Prime Video.
He is equally candid about the hard parts: an eviction, four years operating out of a parking lot, the death of Tommy Jr., one of the show’s central figures,, a marketing organization built for seven locations that had to be rebuilt for two, and the open question of how much of that work AI should now absorb. Speaker labels and section timestamps are preserved below.
Jump to a section
- Meet Michael Ungaro and the San Pedro Fish Market Story
- Why Michael Left the Family Business — and What Failure Taught Him
- The Value-Proposition Exercise That Revealed the Real Customer
- From Norm’s Landing to 3,000 Seats on the LA Waterfront
- How Instagram and One Food Beast Video Closed a Freeway Off-Ramp
- Why Most Operators Are Afraid of Marketing
- Letting Guests and Employees Tell the Story
- What Would Have Happened Without the Brand
- Rebuilding the Marketing Model for Two Locations
- Where AI Fits — and Where It Does Not
- Building a Story Arc With a Reality-TV Producer
- Competing on Story When Food Is Everywhere
- What to Order, and Where to Find Them
Meet Michael Ungaro and the San Pedro Fish Market Story (0:00)
Jeremy Julian (0:00): Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I like to say, every episode, I know you guys have got lots of choices, so thank you for hanging out. Today I am joined by a restaurant operator who’s come up through the space and he’s doing some really cool stuff. I’m really excited to talk to open up the kimono to share a little bit about what Michael and his family have been doing because you know what? I’ve been a fan for quite some time. He and I have gotten to know each other over the last couple of years at some trade shows and things like that. But why don’t I shut up and let you introduce yourself, Michael, and then we can kind of talk about what you’ve been doing on the restaurant side and then kinda how you’ve been pivoting a little bit.
Michael Ungaro (0:39): Yeah, well great. Thanks for having me on, Jeremy. It’s an honor to be included in what we were just talking about before we started rolling. We’ve got to get back to that ’cause I didn’t know the history there between our brands. So yeah, my name’s Mike Ungaro. I’m the visionary CEO and one of the owners of the San Pedro Fish Market and Restaurant, which my grandfather started seventy years ago. And then in recent years, like I said probably over the last almost ten now, we started telling our story through media, which became a TV show known as what we call Kings of Fish. It was mostly designed to be on social media platforms. But then during the pandemic we were approached to put it onto Amazon Prime. So we kind of rebooted the whole thing from five minute episodes into twenty two minute episodes. And the first season is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Kings of Fish. And you know in between all that — and the TV show will tell you the whole story — we started off as just a 200 square foot storefront in the city of San Pedro, California, which is on the LA waterfront. My grandfather had given my dad and his best friend, who’s my godfather, my uncle, Tommy, a choice, because you guys are fifteen, right? You know, I’ll pay for you to go to college or you can work. And they didn’t want to go to school, so they just went to work after school and turned it from this two hundred square foot business, which eventually moved down onto the waterfront, into what at its peak was 3,000 seats on 55,000 square feet, serving about two million customers a year. I think only SeaWorld beat us as far as like non subsidized waterfront business attractions on the West Coast. And it was just an honor to be part of it. I had left and gone. My dad’s like, Hey, don’t get stuck here like I did, go to college and do something else. So I went to USC, I worked in banking, I worked in insurance, and I realized that I didn’t like being at a cubicle.
Why Michael Left the Family Business — and What Failure Taught Him (2:26)
Michael Ungaro (2:29): I didn’t want to do it. So I ended up going back to work for the family. I guess it was after I got married, it’s 1997, I think it was. And I think about two years after that, 99, my dad actually unexpectedly passed away. So I got a lot of time to spend with him that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, which is great. And then, you know, I kept thinking: you didn’t want me to work here, didn’t want me to work here. I think I’m gonna leave and try something else. So we also had a small location — recently shut it down — in the city of Wilmington, which really was more of our commissary storage house, but it had a restaurant. We used to do smoked fish out of it. And I had the idea that what if we took over this piece of property next to it, which we hadn’t bought, and turned it into a patio, outdoor seating, which is what we’re famous for in our waterfront location. But this wasn’t on the waterfront, it was more inland. And let’s see how that works. And I ran a bunch of experiments with it. I was kind of satisfied. I found another location. Left the family, opened it on my own, in the neighboring city of Carson, very close to where the Home Depot Center was at the time. Well, still is — no, I think it’s called StubHub. I know, keeps changing names. Problem was, people that were going to watch the Galaxy play were getting off the freeway, going down the street, and turning to the right to go to the games, and I was half a block to the left. So every business between there was going up ten percent to twenty percent a week, and I was going down. So it was a very big learning lesson. And we didn’t have social media at the time, this is like two thousand and four, right before my third daughter was born. And I realized, I’m okay on the operations side, but I really don’t understand finance as well as I thought, and I definitely don’t know marketing. And so I learned that marketing’s really what I enjoyed learning about — telling the story of the business. And you know, we had some accomplishments there, but we couldn’t really make it work. So I ended up shutting it down, pretty close to bankruptcy actually. It was a pretty expensive lesson. And went back to work for the family and kind of rebuilt the financial damage that I’d done to ourselves by creating that. I did create a really cool corporate catering business that became like a corporate catering brokering business. I had friends that were sales reps in different areas, finance, medical, and they’re like, you know, you’re really close to the freeway. Can you create a catering menu and we’ll buy from you and just deliver it to the hospitals where we sell. And I did that for a while. We shut the business down. I started doing it out of one of my family’s restaurants. But then these people just called me. So I realized, you know what I could do? Again, still we don’t have social media at the time. Just texting was the best we could do as far as communicating. It’s like, I’ll rent this garage from my brothers. I’ll put a refrigerator in, have some gorilla racks. And I’ll work out deals with all the restaurants I know. This guy does sandwiches, this guy does Italian food, this guy does breakfast burritos. Just give me packages. And then I would mark up the package, put my name on it, send someone to pick it up, go to the storage garage to get the drinks and the insulated catering boxes and then deliver it to the hospital. And it was okay until gas got to six fifty a gallon at the time. Then I just shut it down. But a lot of learning lessons, and one of the things I would say is, every one of those things I tried, whether it was banking, insurance or the restaurant — instead of just giving up, throwing my hands in the air and crawling into a hole to die, I asked what did I learn from this that I could innovate with and use in future endeavors. That’s probably been the best lesson learned. But anyways, that’s me.
Jeremy Julian (5:53): Yeah, well, and one of the things that I know you said when you introduced yourself, Michael, is the visionary — and clearly based on your last run there, really visionary with how do I serve people? And I guess that’s one of the things I love about the brand and even your ethos: that you’re trying to serve people in a way that you can engage with them. And I got a chance to go down the YouTube rabbit hole, as I said to you before we hit record, and have watched a little bit of the Amazon stuff. But it feels like that attitude of service is something that you and your family have kind of grown up in, and I guess I’d love for you to riff on that for just a few minutes, because you were serving in the restaurants to try and serve people and you guys were doing it at crazy scale.
The Value-Proposition Exercise That Revealed the Real Customer (6:40)
Michael Ungaro (6:40): I started to track the customer base when technology was available. One of the credit card companies we were using would provide us with a heat map to show where our customers lived and I was blown away. I’m like, wow, we have a hundred mile draw. We’re not a restaurant, we’re an attraction. And then one of the things we were trying to figure out — I brought in some marketing help. The offer was around and I didn’t understand exactly what they were offering me. I just knew I couldn’t answer the question, so I wanted to learn more. But he helped us define our value proposition. So what we did was, this friend of a friend brought in a whole group of our people and he goes, normally I just work with a board, maybe four or five people. You brought twenty people in here. We might not be able to finish this in a day. But from the questions he was asking, what I realized was our employees had so much more information and insight into our customer base than we did as owners, because we had grown so much that we had, I think, 14 different point of sale areas inside the restaurant. We had a kitchen here, a kitchen there, a bar here, a bar there, a fish market there. Because we were just slapping these things together on the weekends to handle the crowds we were bringing in. And if you worked in a different area, you had a totally different insight into what the customers cared about that I wasn’t aware of. So when we went through this Q&A, what we came up with was, our value proposition is celebrating food and family. It seems totally simple, but what you start to realize is our customer base were coming in going, you know, I used to come here when I was a little kid with my parents. I’ve got my parents with me and my kids, and in some cases their grandkids. So you’re seeing these people that wanted to share this experience of three or four generations of family members. The other thing that I wasn’t aware of — and it’s totally obvious when I think about it, I just didn’t do the homework on it. So I had a classmate that was a business professional from Mexico. And our customer base is mostly from Mexico. But we didn’t really take time to get to know them in the way that this person explained in one conversation. He goes, Mike, you might not realize this. But the customer base that you have that have come here from Mexico — and you know, in Mexico you’re either in the upper class or the lower class, there’s no middle class. So you may only be able to make $40 a week at the top. And you would watch your bosses or your employers enjoying crab and lobster and shrimp, but you could never afford it on forty dollars a week. But if you left the country to come here, however you did that, sacrificed everything and eventually got your whole family here, and then you got a job making forty dollars an hour in the trades — maybe you’re a contractor, whatever it is — you’re able to come here on a Sunday after church with your whole family, after all your bills are paid, and you have enough money here to celebrate that you’ve achieved the American Dream by eating lobster, king crab and shrimp, that you could only watch your employer do when you were in Mexico. And I was like, dude, I had no idea of that narrative and it’s so deep. So between him telling me that and then the surveys we did internally with our customers, it helped us really shape around who’s our customer, what do they care about and how can we take care of that. So that’s basically what we started doing.
Jeremy Julian (9:51): I love that. For those that haven’t been there, haven’t seen the stories, haven’t seen the social media, Mike — I’ve been, and I’m gonna geek out here for just a few minutes, but I’d love for you to explain at least what it was, you know, 10, 15 years ago when I first experienced it. You went through it really quick, but there’s so many different ways to engage with the brand. It might be one of the most unique, if not the most unique dining experience I’ve ever had, going to the original property. The fish market, the outdoor grill and the indoor — it’s just awesome and it’s hard to almost articulate in words if you can’t see it. We’ll put some links in there. And I know this really goes into the marketing and how we’re gonna tell the story to make sure people know, but it is one of the most unique dining experiences. And I think part of why you guys drive so much traffic is because of what you just talked about. You’re serving, and it’s such a great cool experience.
From Norm’s Landing to 3,000 Seats on the LA Waterfront (10:43)
Michael Ungaro (10:43): So I’ll go back a little bit. We originally went down to the waterfront in nineteen fifty nine. We were in a different part in fifty six. Fifty nine we moved down, took over a place called Norm’s Landing, and we were learning about seafood. I wasn’t even born yet. So my dad, my grandfather — my grandfather’s having my dad and Tommy, his best friend, and they’ve all passed away since — but just learn everything you can about seafood. What do you think? And so they built Norm’s Landing, just basically throwing things against the wall to see what would stick. Well, then the rest of the waterfront’s getting developed and we’re in the way. Norm’s Landing’s in the way. But my grandfather and my uncle had some political connections in the city of LA. And they’re like, listen, not everybody can afford to go to a white tablecloth experience, which looks like what’s going to happen as they redevelop this waterfront. You need to have some place for the blue-collar workers to go with their families and enjoy seafood too. So they worked a deal where we were able to get our own spot and the developer had to build around us. But we had to build this spot. So we were working out of trailers and a parking lot from like seventy eight through nineteen eighty, I think it was, until we reopened somewhere around that timeline as San Pedro Fish Market, which is what you would have known. And San Pedro Fish Market was different because we didn’t have a restaurant before. We were just a fish market.
Jeremy Julian (11:56): It was a fish market where you’d go in, but then you guys would cook it on the fly if they asked for it. You could buy it and take it in your car and go home, right?
Michael Ungaro (12:01): In the original one they only cooked crab and lobster. There were boilers for the live crab and lobster in the corner, and shrimp cocktails, but there was only maybe seating for twenty or thirty people. So Tommy had a bigger vision. He’s like, we’re gonna build this thing and it’s gonna have an outdoor deck and we’re gonna have a dining room and we’re gonna have a fast food kitchen and we’re gonna build out a nice crab tank and we’re gonna have this big seafood display. And then it rained. We opened like Good Friday in nineteen eighty, I think. Then it rained. It was like the worst El Niño we’ve had, except maybe the one they’re predicting for this year. So we had no business. Everybody had mortgaged their house. Everything was falling apart. So you know, in desperate times like that, visionaries innovate and try to see what’ll work. And what he noticed was, there’s this Mexican food restaurant next door that’s selling these things called fajitas. Has anyone ever seen this before? It’s like steak and chicken with bell pepper, tomato, onion. I think we could do that with fish and shrimp, because we’ve got a lot of frozen product that we’re using to smoke and it’s not premium enough to put it in the showcase anymore, but you could cut it up and put it on a grill with veggies. And then he said we should also do red potatoes like they do on the East Coast. So we’d buy all these potatoes, we’d boil them in the crab tank boilers, put them in the refrigerator, buy vegetables and buy slicers for tomato, onion and bell pepper. And then we created our own signature seasoning, which was kind of a Cajun version of Old Bay. And then we started going with local bakers to get loaves of garlic bread and we started buying tortillas. And basically we just put griddles out on the weekends and we sold this fajita product and people loved it. And then they’d say, hey, if we buy our own fish, can you cook it the same way? So we created another kitchen with griddles, and for an extra dollar we’ll barbecue a fish, an extra dollar we’ll cook it. And the demand to create these giant family-style trays of seafood, where the customer was really deciding — I want salmon, I want shrimp, I want scallops, they could create their own version of it — just evolved and it became our signature dish, what we call the world-famous shrimp tray or seafood tray. And we got to the point where that became so popular we’re selling two hundred tons just of shrimp a year in these trays. And then we were selling like two thousand pounds of red potatoes, and another thousand pounds of tomatoes and another thousand pounds of bell pepper and another thousand pounds of onions, that we had to figure out a process for. It just became like a phenomenon. And that became what would draw people in.
How Instagram and One Food Beast Video Closed a Freeway Off-Ramp (14:21)
Michael Ungaro (14:21): The interesting part about it was, it’s such a visually appealing product when you get to choose, right? You’re gonna go in there — I want swordfish, I want calamari, throw on some octopus, give me a big red Mexican red snapper. And then the tray comes out and you put it on the table in front of everybody. As time went by, you get into, you know, ten years ago, fourteen years, people started taking pictures, geotagging themselves and posting it to Instagram. And the byproduct of that is we became one of the top ten most Instagrammed restaurants, because we had 3,000 seats at the time. We were up there with Café Du Monde and Katz’s Delicatessen and Perch and Voodoo Doughnut, all these places that are also Instagrammable, but because we had so many seats I think it upped us on the geotagging numbers. So I’m flipping the channels and there we are on CNN as a top ten restaurant, Time magazine, Condé Nast — like, how did we become so popular? But it was the customers telling the story, like you were telling me earlier. They just wanted everyone to know where they were. Then the next thing that happened is I started to see an opportunity to tell our story through social media as it came on. Because there was a movement to redevelop the waterfront, but nobody really knew who we were or what we were doing, because we’re so under the radar about it. What I just told you didn’t exist for people. They had their own narrative about it — like, this is kind of like that swap meet down in Ensenada, the Mercado Negro, just a bunch of stalls where they sell seafood. They didn’t know it was a family owned business, and that was all by design. So social media created the opportunity to tell the story and build the brand. So as the city’s going out to look for people to redevelop the waterfront, the goal was: we need to show up, so they could see the value, and we really want to be irreplaceable to this project. And ultimately that’s what happened. We created a TV show called Kings of Fish, we put it onto YouTube, and then — I don’t know if you ever worked with the guys that owned Food Beast. They used to be in Costa Mesa, or Santa Ana actually. We had a mutual connection to them and they were creating their own content and their own shows for their website, and they had over a million followers, and we had maybe 20,000 at the time. I’m like, well, I’ll give you the first four episodes of the show in return for the eyeballs. And they’re like, well, I think we’re getting the better end of the deal. So how about we come down and create some content for you guys? And they came down not really knowing what we do. They’re like, well, what do you do here? Do you have like a lot of cheese or something? I’m like, no, we do seafood, man. We make these trays. And they saw this obscure menu kind of off to the corner and said, well, it says super tray. What’s a super tray? And I go, honestly, I don’t even know. I never even noticed that menu before. That’s a kitchen we open on the weekends when it’s busy. But I’ll make you a super tray. So I made a tray full of seafood — lobster, king crab, all of it — and I gave them the big pitchers of beer that we have. And they created all this content. A few days later they launched it. I was out of town looking at colleges with my daughter, and I’m getting calls from the Port of Los Angeles Police Department saying, you know, it’s March, it’s raining, and there’s so many people here that we can’t control the freeways. We had to close an off ramp. Like, what did you do? And I go, I have no idea. But this video that Food Beast created went viral and it brought in like thirty thousand customers in ten days, from every state in the country, because they all saw this tray of seafood and wanted to come check it out. So that demonstrated to me: one, know your customer, know what they care about, help them, let them do their own thing. But if you find the right medium to tell that story, other people will be attracted to that and actually want to be part of it too, and you can bring them in. And that’s what Kings of Fish, social media, Food Beast, all that stuff gave people — an opportunity to be part of the brand and tell the story for us, and actually build the customer demand. It was pretty cool.
Why Most Operators Are Afraid of Marketing (18:01)
Jeremy Julian (18:01): Well, in general, you and I talk to restaurant operators at trade shows and things like that. And I think people have this misnomer, I guess, Mike, about what is marketing and what is telling your story. So I’d love to hear it from your eyes. What is that and why is it so important? You and I have a mutual friend, Shawn, down in San Diego. A lot of our listeners know Shawn Walchef. Great guy. I met him years ago when he was still just running a barbecue restaurant. He was starting to build a media company. And I give him credit when I see him — this podcast exists partially because of Shawn. He and I had a couple of calls. He said, dude, you need to get out and tell your story. And in general I look at it and go, I think operators are scared to death to either get on camera or tell what it is that they do, and they think it’s this huge production. I’d love for you to talk through what does that even mean to you? Because he got on Amazon, or he’s on YouTube — he must have a crew of forty people that come in every day to do these things. And I know that’s not exactly true. You have to change things a little bit, but it’s not nearly as overwhelming as I think a lot of operators think it is.
Michael Ungaro (19:08): Yeah, I’ll tell a story. God, there’s so much there. I just had a whole call on marketing this morning because we’re trying to revamp the way we do it, and streamline and make it more effective. You have to constantly be revisiting it because the technology changes it. So you might be paying this, but the technology means you only need to pay this, and you gotta figure out what the middle ground is. I left the family business for a while and had my own little restaurant in Carson, I mentioned earlier. There was a hardware store next to me and I was creating a catering offer for holidays and I just didn’t know how to get a customer base to order from us. And what I learned from this was — I was always in this hardware store because something’s always breaking in my restaurant. And I got to know the owner. He happened to be from San Pedro too, even though we were both working in Carson. And I go, do you have customers you sell product to? Because there’s so much industrial here. I figured those would be good catering customers for the holidays. And he goes, yeah, I got a list, we have revolving credit. And I go, do you do any marketing to them? And he said something that stuck out. He just said: I hate marketing. But you can have the list of customers. I go, no, no, I don’t want to do that to you. This is what I’ll do. If you share that with me, I’m gonna send all of them a Christmas card from you thanking them for being a customer of yours for 50 years, because it’s your 50th anniversary and you haven’t told anybody. And if they come in with this card, they can go use it next door at my restaurant for a free fish taco. So you’re giving them a gift, you’re acknowledging the customer base, and you’re thanking them for supporting you for 50 years. He goes, yeah, whatever, I don’t care. And all these people came in and they thanked him like he’d never done anything for them before, and they couldn’t believe it. They were so happy to get this card. And then they came over and got a taco from me, which is great. And now I can send them all my holiday catering menu. And there was no social media at the time, by the way. There was email, but no social media. And it stuck with me. What I’ve realized over the years is the majority of operators do not want to deal with marketing. They’re either scared of it, they don’t understand it, or they think it’s hocus pocus or some kind of BS.
Jeremy Julian (21:09): Or I’m gonna spend all of this money — or they think of it as, I’m gonna go post on social media, and it didn’t work the one time that I posted. You said it: you’ve gotta constantly be iterating, testing different things. The lady that runs marketing for our team, Allie, she constantly is testing stuff. And 99 times out of a hundred anymore, she begs forgiveness. She goes, I’m gonna go do this and hopefully it works, and if it doesn’t, you can yell at me later. But in general, it’s also creating awareness about your brand. To your point — if I could just get somebody in the door, how much could I create an experience that’s Instagrammable, and it creates awareness, and now it’s almost a flywheel that just keeps flowing.
Michael Ungaro (21:50): Part of it is, how do you stand out without being obnoxious? And maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re obnoxious or not, but you want to be authentic. People don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to. That’s where you lose them. And that’s where Shawn really goes, be the show, not the commercial — because nobody wants to be sold to, but they are interested in your brand. Allie and I were in a talk and they were showing the trends by category, and everything was going up except seafood, which went down. And I’m like, my god, that’s weird. I saw it as an opportunity. But I knew she was behind me, so I looked over, made eye contact, and she just reacted. And that’s the marketing right there — that you knew I was gonna look at you and you knew how to connect and exactly what was gonna make me laugh. But to me it was, how do you connect with what people care about? Because there were 300 people there that didn’t know who I was or what I was thinking about. And social media gives you the opportunity to speak to people, ask them questions, get them involved. What Shawn does in his talks is he has everybody stand up, give the phone to the person next to you and have them record you doing something you can post. And you could see how uncomfortable it makes everybody. Because the majority of people just wanna be left alone and not have to speak, and they don’t realize the opportunity that’s being missed.
Letting Guests and Employees Tell the Story (22:49)
Michael Ungaro (22:49): Now we have a guy that works in our San Pedro location — and by the way, I didn’t even finish the story. We got evicted again and had to work out of a parking lot for the last like four years. But we’re doing pretty well. The brand is built, and everything that we did to build it, all the marketing, all the storytelling. When we reopened the current location we’re in on October 1st, we had one billion media PR impressions, just because people were so excited that we were back in business with 2,000 seats. Then they all showed up. And we have a guy at the front who kind of acts like a host, to direct people, because the lines could be two hours long before you get in sometimes. And he captures a bunch of content. Where’d you come from? What are you here for? Why do you have Disneyland on? He goes, well, we always visit — we go here and Disneyland in the same weekend. And then we put all these stories on social media, because they connect with the viewer. They want to see not just the food. How far did you go? Why did you wait in line? How often do you come here? And when you let people tell that story as a customer, sometimes they just love the spotlight. But it’s such great marketing because that’s not coached, it’s not prodded. It’s just, tell us your story. And I think when you’ve got thousands and thousands of people coming through, it’s a missed opportunity if you’re not doing that. Now, as the operator, the owner — I went around and interviewed probably 10 of our employees that have been with us, some of them for 30 years. Why did you stick around? What do you like about it? Tell us a funny story about this or that. And it was kind of designed originally to be something HR could use for recruiting. We used it in a couple of different places on LinkedIn and on our social media. But people were telling me, well, you know, I have all this real estate and I put my daughter through college just working here and saving my money, and it’s changed my life. I never thought I’d be able to have the life I have based on what you provided to me as an employer. So I think there are stories everywhere and they’re just waiting to be told.
Jeremy Julian (25:03): When you started, Mike, it was way different than what it is now. Shawn talks about it all the time. Dave Ramsey calls it the magic wand in our pocket — this phone that almost everybody that’s going to be listening to this has in their pocket, that they can go create content with. People just want an inside scoop. What happens at the grill? What happens at the fish market? What happens when you’re bringing fish in off the boat? What happens when you’re unpacking the truck? Because people want that inside look. They also want the flip side of it — what’s happening with the consumers? And it doesn’t require this big production, crazy lighting. You can do it nowadays with that device in your pocket, but it’s got to be intentional. And again, you guys went through COVID. You guys have had a rough up and down last few years with all of the situations within the waterfront. So put it out there: this is what would have happened had you not built a brand. What would have happened to you had you not had marketing? To encourage those listeners that are operators out there that are not doing it — why do you need to be doing it? It didn’t have to get to the level where it’s full production, 22 minutes on Amazon Prime Video. We’ve got a restaurant here in Dallas that’s a good customer of ours, Heartache Barbecue. They started doing exactly what you’re talking about. They would interview their staff members. Why do you like it here? What’s your favorite menu item? And it’s just little quick 30-second to 90-second clips. They’re doing really good volume. Fantastic place. Everybody loves it. They have some fun stuff with it on social. They also talk to customers. I just love that idea, that without it you can’t tell your story. And you’re at the whim of, hey, the freeway is now under construction, nobody can get there. All of these different things that can impact you. So I’d love for you to share a little bit. Where do you think you’d be without it?
What Would Have Happened Without the Brand (26:45)
Michael Ungaro (26:45): I don’t think we would have existed, honestly. I think we would have been evicted just at the same time everybody else was, and pushed aside. The storytelling that we produced and put out there not only increased our sales, but it gave us the voice to talk about who we are as a company, who we are to our customer base. As an example, I was really concerned when the redevelopment was happening, because I think we were told, we’re gonna evict everyone and you can all come back when the buildings are done. And I was like, there’s gotta be a better way to build a relationship with the people that are gonna plan to develop this. And one of the things that we started realizing was, we have so many customers in the LA area — it’s a hundred mile radius before it drops off. And so in one way, if you’re a politician, that’s a threat, because if your customer base is going to lose their favorite place for Mother’s Day and they’re your voter, they probably want you to get behind it and support it. So that was something that we were able to leverage. And having the TV show was another way to speak narratives. But we never mentioned any of this in the TV show, because I didn’t want it to be a combative situation. We really wanted it to be an opportunity that could help the developers, help the city, help our allies, help our brands, which is what we do now.
Jeremy Julian (27:43): And they’ve been going there for thirty years for Mother’s Day every year, right?
Michael Ungaro (28:07): Going back to your original question — I don’t believe it would have existed anymore. For one. And two, I think it really changed the trajectory of what we were capable of doing. We had a frozen meal line for a while in grocery stores. We were really qualified to do that — we had the brand and we had the customer base — but producing it and selling it and distributing it, it’s better to team up with somebody. And I would probably revisit that now again and try to relaunch it with the right partner. Because we realized we have customers in every single state that visit us, which I wouldn’t have known otherwise if we didn’t start polling, and if the data wasn’t available. The technology now allows you to look these things up at a lower cost. I think there’s a missed opportunity in how to transact with people that don’t have the time to drive a thousand miles to visit you every weekend. Do you know we have a huge percentage of customers — we learned this too — that come from Phoenix and Arizona for the day? I mean it’s a five hour one way drive, to eat and go back home the same day. And I’m looking at that going, well, do we need to start looking at Phoenix and Las Vegas as the next opportunity to build a project? I don’t know. I don’t know if people would want to go there. I think a lot of them want to get out of the heat and come by the water. But these are things that open new opportunities that you’re learning about through the marketing that you do, the customers that you talk to, and the feedback that you get. One of the other things that showed up — at one point we were opening sort of a fast casual concept. Didn’t really work. The pandemic kind of destroyed it and we realized it really wasn’t the path we wanted to go; we want to focus on more waterfront, larger locations. But I had a friend of mine in the restaurant industry who was a fan of ours — he’s actually my neighbor. And he said something that I hadn’t really articulated appropriately until he said it. He goes, if you’re gonna open across the street from, say, California Fish Grill — it’s a really successful seafood concept, and I’d followed them, I was a fan of them — he goes, they don’t have your story. So if you were to open your concept across the street, even though they have similarities, you could compete just on your history and your story. Have a storyboard or a wall, or have your TV show playing on TVs as people walk in. And that sets you apart. It’s a marginal utility that sets you apart from everybody else doing what you’re doing. And that’s part of the reason I started to produce our online series. Let’s tell the story, let’s leverage that and use it, because you’ll have people that come in from like Maine. They only came in because they were going on a cruise out of LA and they saw your show and wanted to meet so-and-so, and they come down just to say hi. Which is cool.
Jeremy Julian (30:38): We’re recording this right on the back half of the World Cup. I’m guessing you probably had some international visitors that came in to go watch games at the Los Angeles stadium. But you wouldn’t have had it had you not been out there, and people finding you from Norway or from Sweden or from Japan or whatever else, right?
Michael Ungaro (30:50): I didn’t track it, but there were a lot of people that did come in. And we were also a FIFA fan zone — not our restaurant, but the project that we’re inside of. Which was good and bad. On one hand it drew in a ton of people, but they were watching the game over there, like a fifteen minute walk away, and the parking was another fifteen minutes in the opposite direction. So it was a hard thing to guard as an opportunity, but I still think it was a good brand builder, because people are like, that’s where this place is, it’s down here. And they’ll come back eventually. So it was good to get the eyeballs.
Rebuilding the Marketing Model for Two Locations (31:29)
Jeremy Julian (31:29): Talk to me a little bit. You said you were on a call this morning, talking about how you guys are gonna pivot. I’d love to hear a little bit of inside baseball. What does that mean? Where are you pivoting? Where are you looking now? You have made it, you’re on a streaming platform, you’re on YouTube, your faces are out there — if you really want to go find it, you can go hear the story. But you said you’ve got to constantly be innovating. This will release in six or eight weeks, and I’m sure there’s people out there that are like, I need to figure it out, I did something but now I need to do the next thing. Where are you at on that journey?
Michael Ungaro (32:01): What we’re doing now is we’re looking for ways to better assess and evaluate the ROI on the marketing dollars we spend. We had built a really robust marketing team and we had a lot of people on retainer, but the problem was it was too expensive for two locations to sustain. At the time we had six, we were going to seven or eight, but we shrunk down. So we had to reassess — it’s become too bloated for our budget. So what can we do? And now with AI coming out, what can we outsource to AI? Do we look for an agency? We’ve evaluated a bunch of agencies to see what they offer. And it’s like, okay, we do have this, we don’t have that, we could use this. We’re still assessing what’s gonna work best. But it’s interesting to have different conversations with what other companies are offering in marketing. You never know, because the sales pitch is never the same as the actual product once you get it. Some of it we look at and we’re like, well, we’ve outperformed this, we can already do that. But you know what, I’m not sure if we’re doing this as well as we could. The website should change. We don’t have a TikTok presence that we should have. So I don’t know where we’re gonna land on it yet, but we’re really just trying to assess how do we get the highest ROI from the investment that we have, and what are we willing to spend. Like I was telling you earlier, we got a billion impressions and brought all these people into our San Pedro location and sales are on track there to be pretty astronomical. I mean, we could do twenty million dollars out of this temporary location for what it is. It’s built out of shipping containers. It’s temporary, you know? But the brand is so strong from all the marketing that we did. So on one hand you’re saying, well, I don’t know that we would be doing that if we hadn’t done all this brand building over the years. Because I could see when I jumped in and started plugging the storytelling in — you can see where we’d had, for 13 years, basically about two and a half to 2.8% growth every year, which is pretty flat, to where we went to 10 to 14 every single year when we started utilizing storytelling, for seven straight years right through the pandemic. And so it helped us get through the pandemic, because we spent so much time building the brand through telling the story online and all the media and PR that we did, that customers were dialed in. I’m going there whether there’s a pandemic or not. And since we had all of our seating outside, we were actually poised to do well during the pandemic in that way. But now we’re in a different situation. That building’s been torn down. We had to rebuild in the temporary location. We’re trying to assess what our next moves are. So it’s like, how do we duplicate that? And I’m not settled on how AI is going to help with that or not, but it seems to be inevitable that if you’re not utilizing some of these newer technologies in your marketing to lower your cost and produce a higher return, the next guy’s going to, and you won’t be able to compete with him by the time you figure it out. So that’s what the pivot is. It’s like, how fast can we do it?
Where AI Fits — and Where It Does Not (34:42)
Jeremy Julian (34:42): You can text Allie and ask her what YouTube video I sent her this morning. I sent her a video that I found — you know, how I replaced my VP of marketing with agents. And I got back a text: are you trying to tell me something? And it was no, you need to use these things to continue to accelerate what it is that you do, because she is so creative, and I love her and tease her about it from time to time.
Michael Ungaro (35:04): That was a recurring theme at a conference I was at recently: we’re not using AI to replace people, we’re using AI to replace the work they’re doing, so it opens their space to be more effective and do new things. And I keep thinking about that — not everybody could fill that void. You know what I mean? A lot of people just want to have my tasks and get paid at the end of the week. And what you’re asking them to do is invent and innovate. It’s a different skill set. So I think in order for that to work, for the way AI is changing things, we’re gonna have to either use AI to do this, or do it on our own as visionaries and owners of the company — which is training people on how to innovate. Because I don’t think we can expect them to just know how to do that.
Jeremy Julian (35:48): Not at all. I’ve got twenty-eight agents, Mike. Twenty-eight agents that I’ve built for myself to help me. And I’m not saying that to pat myself on the back, but I’ve gone super deep. I just spent an hour and a half meeting with somebody earlier this week to show them what I’d built, to try and help them accelerate and be more human and be more of who they are. The amount of time we lose doing things goes away and you can be human nowadays. And so from my perspective, even as silly as this sounds — and I know I said it before I hit the record button — that email that you got sent as a follow-up was not sent by me. It was sent by my agent saying, hey, this is what we’re going to talk about. And I say that not to brag, but you and I had talked about it. It consolidated all of our ongoing conversation prior to preparing for this to say, we want to tell the story of what you guys have been building over the last 50 plus years. And you thought it was written by me, but it sounded like me because I trained it to sound like me. I trained it on our conversations. And it didn’t look like slop, unless you’re telling me otherwise. But to me, that would have taken me thirty minutes to write six weeks ago.
Michael Ungaro (36:58): You wanna know the irony of that? The reason I didn’t see it till right before was I had this call on marketing and I knew there were a lot of emails going back and forth about it between various people in the company. And I’m like, I don’t have Claude hooked up to my Gmail. So literally from the time I got out of the shower till I got to breakfast and got to the car, I linked up Gmail and prompted Claude to read all the emails relevant to that and give me a synopsis so I was prepared. Which is why I didn’t read your email — because I was reading that one.
Jeremy Julian (37:30): That’s pretty funny. But that gives you the ability to now be a better business owner. And I think all of our listeners out there need to be leading the charge, or finding somebody to help them lead the charge, or they’re gonna get left behind. Michael, before we wrap, I’d love to hear — do you guys use any framework for storytelling? I’m a huge Donald Miller fan. I don’t know if you know the StoryBrand framework. Anytime somebody talks about story — you live close to Hollywood.
Building a Story Arc With a Reality-TV Producer (37:58)
Jeremy Julian (37:58): A lot of the really, really big movies over time have used that same framework. Is that kind of how you guys tell the story — where the guest is really the star of the show, or the staff member is, or the fish for that matter?
Michael Ungaro (38:10): I just recently came across him in the last year, so that was after we produced other content. Our main producer works on Bar Rescue, Below Deck, Iron Chef, a lot of different shows. And we’ve worked with him for 10 years. So with his background in reality, what he does is he talks to us about what are you working on, what’s going on, and we sort of sketch out some of the bigger things that are going on in the business. And then what he’ll do is he’ll come and film as much of it as he can and then do these one-on-ones — OTF, on the fly — where he’ll do those. And then he’ll also have these black screen ones where he’s prompting us to speak about something he filmed. I don’t always know what he’s doing, by the way, which is weird. Like, what are you trying to get at? And he goes, well, talk to me about this and tell me what happened here. And then he has to put all of it together. One of the things he taught me from his work on Bar Rescue as an editor: they give me all this content and then tell me to turn it into a story. But if you had filmed this, or got this camera angle, or asked this question, it’d be a lot easier. I only have what you gave me. So having that background, he’s able to come in with us and look at things that we’re working on and then create a rising action — what’s the conflict, what’s the rising action, how are we gonna resolve it? And so there’ll be some, like — we weren’t gonna do this season for Amazon Prime. We were kind of done with it, because one of the main people in the show had passed away from COVID, Tommy Jr. And so we didn’t know if it was really appropriate to move on. And Tim, our producer, was really close with Junior. He loved him. They had a great friendship. So we brought his kids and family in, and he goes, listen — Pepsi was supposed to give us some money to do another season and put it on Amazon Prime, and they never did, that’s a whole other story. He goes, we weren’t gonna do this. But if you would like, we can do a season and it’ll basically tell the story of, sort of a memorial to your dad — because he was only, gosh, I think he was fifty-five when he passed away, and that was four years ago. And he goes, I would consider it, guys, only because my dad passed away at the same age and all I have is a few photographs on my mantle and maybe some old videos if I figure out how to play them. Because I don’t have seven seasons on YouTube of my dad being himself, which you guys have. So this would be a way to do a memorial. That was kind of the genesis for the final season. Then we got the eviction notice. Then we had to move to a parking lot. So there’s this story arc of what it took to get where we were, how we lost this member of the family, and we’re memorializing him at the end of each episode — to where, my God, there’s an entirely new chapter. We’re in a parking lot again like we were thirty years ago. How are we gonna get through this? And that was the cliffhanger that season two will resolve.
Jeremy Julian (40:55): All of that is very, very vivid framework, to your point. And I think all too often, as we’re thinking about our messaging, we’ve got to think about it from the eyes of the consumer that’s receiving it. What story do we want to tell? And how do we tell an authentic story? Because with AI there’s gonna be so much slop out there that people are going to throw at you, and authenticity will win. You’ve got to meet Allie. We’re just normal people that wanna talk and wanna solve problems and wanna help people out — and to your point, serve as many customers as you can and create an experience.
Competing on Story When Food Is Everywhere (41:34)
Michael Ungaro (41:34): Jeremy, we probably all deal with this in one way or another: where do you want to eat tonight, honey? Well, I saw this on Instagram and they’re nearby and it looked really cool, let’s check it out. A friend of mine pointed this out to me years ago: there’s no shortage of food in America. So it’s really hard to charge a premium when it’s on every corner. It messed with my head, by the way, for about five years. I go, she’s right, it’s everywhere. How do we compete? Then I realized, you compete on your story. Your story is what sets you apart. There’s no shortage of seafood restaurants, but one that has been family owned and operated for 70 years, with uncommon accomplishments and their own TV show — that’s something people are interested in seeing. Like, how do you have 3,000 seats? Forever I would tell people that and they didn’t know how to think about it. Then I had an iPhone where I could show them what it looked like. And then I had a story. And the more I built onto it, the more compelling it was for them. I gotta come check this out, I had no idea. So I think that’s it. Tell your story, figure out what sets you apart, and don’t be shy to speak about it.
Jeremy Julian (42:38): I love that. Flipping the script — now we’ve got them there. You’ve got a new guest that comes in. What do you eat? What do you tell a new guest coming to the property for the first time? There’s gonna be people out there that are gonna be like, dude, I gotta check this out, I never even knew this place existed. They’re gonna listen to the show, they’re gonna fly to LA for something, and they’re gonna be like, I heard that guy. What do you eat? Because you’ve been there eating your whole life, and I’m sure you have some wonky menu items, as most restaurateurs do. What’s your go-to that you say, hey, this is what made us who we are?
What to Order, and Where to Find Them (43:12)
Michael Ungaro (43:12): My go-to whenever we have people visiting: we do a big tray, and I’ll obviously do the shrimp, scallops. I love putting swordfish on there, lobster. If we have black mussels, they pop so it looks good — they’re not my favorite, I prefer green ones, but we typically have the black ones. Some clams. Then the veggies, potatoes, and garlic bread. Also maybe just a warm-up with some clam chowder beforehand. But those are kind of my go-to’s: the scallops, the shrimp. I love the deep-fried baby octopus or the calamari — or even if it’s not deep fried, just grilled — and just mix it all together with our signature seasoning, the bell pepper, tomato, onion, a couple loaves of garlic bread. Then you just sit there and eat it family style and build some memories with people. You really can connect that way. That’s the go-to I have and that’s what I like to introduce people to. I’ll also say, if you can’t make it out — it’s not super profitable for us, but you can go to our Goldbelly site and we’ll ship those trays anywhere in the country. I shipped one today to Tony Gemignani of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana. You ever talked to Tony? I met him recently and had him on the podcast and I go, man, I don’t know how I landed this. What happened is, I was in San Francisco exactly a year ago visiting our architects for a location we’re planning to build in Northern California, in Monterey. And I was hungry, so we went to Tony’s, and then I ate it for breakfast, and then I went to the airport and I was looking around the terminal — there was just all this activity, it’s weird, I never see media inside the terminal at the gate. And they were opening a Tony’s. And he happened to be sitting next to me. And I didn’t notice, because I didn’t know who he was. And I’m like, is that your place? Are you Tony? And we connected with his PR person and a year later I had him on my podcast. So I had to send him some shrimp as a thank you. It was cool.
Jeremy Julian (44:54): I love that you finally got a chance — and I know I had to reschedule, so thank you for that — to tell your story, to tell the story of who you guys are and what you guys do. How do people find you guys? How do people stay connected? Where do they follow? Give all of the TL;DR of making sure that they stay in touch.
Michael Ungaro (45:12): Our website’s the best place to start, sanpedrofish.com, and then all of our social sites are @sanpedrofish. And of course if you have Amazon Prime, search for Kings of Fish and you can watch our show. We also have all the back episodes on our YouTube page, which is also @sanpedrofish. So enjoy, and let us know what you think.
Jeremy Julian (45:30): Awesome. Michael, I appreciate what you do. I appreciate getting to see you around the show. So thank you for coming on. To our listeners, guys — if you haven’t already subscribed, please do so, and make it a great day.
End of transcript. For the episode summary, key quotes, takeaways, FAQ and the video and audio players, head back to the episode page: Why Storytelling Saved San Pedro Fish Market — Michael Ungaro | RTG Ep. 355. This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies and Yelp.
