Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit

How San Pedro Fish Market built a $30M legacy

Speaking at the Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit Tuesday in San Diego, Michael Ungaro shared the gritty, tenacious history of his family's brand — a journey that began in 1956 as a 200-square-foot seafood shop and evolved into a destination serving 2 million customers a year.

Photo: San Pedro Fish Market

March 18, 2026 by Cherryh Cansler — Editor, FastCasual.com

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For most restaurant owners, an eviction notice and a global pandemic would be a death sentence. For Michael Ungaro, CEO of the 70-year-old San Pedro Fish Market, it was just the first act of a high-stakes survival story that has now moved from the California waterfront to Amazon Prime.

Speaking at the Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit Tuesday in San Diego, Ungaro shared the gritty, tenacious history of his family's brand — a journey that began in 1956 as a 200-square-foot seafood shop and evolved into a destination serving 2 million customers a year.

A legacy of innovation

The business was founded by Ungaro's grandfather, father and his father's best friend.

"My grandfather was a bookie," Ungaro quipped. "He just needed to show income."

But the young founders turned it into something extraordinary, surviving early El Niños and redevelopment threats by leaning into innovation.

The market's signature "World Famous Shrimp Tray" originated in response to demand in the late 1970s. Inspired by the rising popularity of fajitas, the family began grilling frozen fish with peppers, onions and potatoes. Today, those family style trays have helped the brand set four Guinness World Records and claim its spot as one of the top 10 most Instagrammed restaurants in the country.

The Digital Pivot: "Kings of Fish"

While many legacy brands struggle to adapt to the digital age, Ungaro embraced it as a defense mechanism. Faced with a second round of redevelopment 15 years ago, he realized the brand needed to become "irreplaceable" to developers.

"Telling your story is the most effective way I've found to become an obstacle to something that could otherwise wipe you out," Ungaro said.

This philosophy led to the creation of "Kings of Fish," a reality series that started as a YouTube project and eventually landed on Amazon Prime in 2024. The show doesn't just feature food; it chronicles the raw, emotional reality of a family business, including the loss of Ungaro's cousin, Tommy Jr., to COVID-19. The second season is in production.

The storytelling has paid off. After a single viral video with Foodbeast in 2017— which garnered 55 million views — the market saw 30,000 customers in 10 days, forcing the police to shut down freeway off-ramps.

Surviving the "Parking Lot" Years

The brand's most dramatic challenge came in November 2022, when the Port of Los Angeles required them to vacate their longtime home to make way for new development.

Refusing to shut down, Ungaro moved the operation into a nearby parking lot in just 60 days. Operating out of mobile kitchens with no permanent plumbing or electricity, the "temporary" setup still managed to pull in $11 million in revenue.

"We used Toast and QR codes to reinvent everything we couldn't do in the older location," Ungaro said. On Oct. 1, 2023, the team moved into a more robust "temporary" 1,500-seat kitchen complex built from retrofitted shipping containers.

"People tell me they only wait in lines at Disneyland and here," Ungaro said. "We realized we're not a restaurant anymore — we're a destination."

The road to $100M

The future for San Pedro Fish Market is one of aggressive expansion. With a 49-year lease signed for the original waterfront location and a third site opening in Monterey, Ungaro has a clear goal: open one location every year for the next decade.

The current "temporary" location is already on track to break $20 million this year.

"But the thing about this is if it wasn't for Kings of Fish and building our brand and all the storytelling we're doing, I don't know that any of those things would have happened. We would have just been swept away like everybody else. But the story, you know it's compelling. People want to be part of it."

Operations

About Cherryh Cansler

Cherryh Cansler is VP of Events for Networld Media Group and publisher of FastCasual.com. She has been covering the restaurant industry since 2012. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine, among many others.

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