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You know your restaurant is popular when it closes down a freeway exit in California. That’s what happened to San Pedro Fish Market after a popular content creator Food Beast made a video about his “Super Seafood Tray”.
With an irresistible mountain of seasoned shrimp, onions, peppers, tomatoes and potatoes, the family meal was destined to be a hit. But no one at San Pedro Fish Market knew just how famous it might turn into until Foodbeast took to social media.
After the video went viral and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, San Pedro Fish Market CEO and co-owner Michael Ungaro received a call from the Los Angeles Port Police on a rainy day in March.
The port police needed to close the motorway exits because they couldn’t cope with the traffic coming into the fish market. The police were confused as to why so many people were coming in on a day when there wasn’t normally much traffic on the quay.
“This video became so popular that within 10 days it attracted 30,000 customers from all over the country and beyond,” Ungaro says. Restaurant Influencers host Shawn Walchef“People called from London, South America, Kansas and Florida.”
Super Seafood Tray has turn into one of the most Instagrammed dishes. “Once we told our story and used these social media platforms, we started to understand why people were coming to us,” says Ungaro, who began working at his family’s fish market when he was 7. “They come with their families; they come for the experience. And the more we developed that narrative, the stronger our brand became.”
Kings of Fi$h series on Prime Video
Foodbeast’s feature on San Pedro Fish Market comes after he had already begun investing in his own content. His award-winning web show Kings of Fish began as a method to capture the family’s vibrant entrepreneurial spirit, shining a light on the vibrant, fun-loving characters who built and proceed to fuel this thriving business. San Pedro Fish Market serves 2.5 million people each yr.
Now the company is expecting to achieve latest heights of fame with the debut of its Kings of Fish number on Amazon Prime Video on August 13.
Eight years after the fish market published its first report Kings of Fish movies — and on the eve of their debut on Amazon Prime Video — the influence of the family’s storytelling strategy is evident.
San Pedro Fish Market has turn into a global phenomenon because the family decided to inform their story over and all over again through content.
“We all have a story about traveling somewhere far away and seeing a Fish Market T-shirt,” Ungaro says. “I traveled to Europe and after college, the same thing. I went to Mexico to visit a couple of our employees—Fish Market T-shirts. It’s just crazy.”
This global recognition is a testament to San Pedro Fish Market’s marketing and storytelling successes that have made it a brand recognized around the world.
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