When faced with a forced eviction from their iconic waterfront location, Michael Ungaro and his team at San Pedro Fish Market didn’t fold — they innovated. In this episode of Behind the Numbers, Michael shares the wild ride of rebuilding his family’s multi-generational business from a 3,000-seat seaside powerhouse to a 900-seat operation in a parking lot — all while maintaining over $11 million in annual revenue.
“You can’t tell if you’re winning or losing the game if you don’t know your score,” explained Michel Ungaro. Amid tight restaurant margins and large-scale shifts, knowing your financials is non-negotiable. When San Pedro Fish Market downsized operations during relocation, the only way to plan for survival – and eventual regrowth – was to lean into accurate, real-time data. Michael went as far as hiring an engineering firm to count traffic when point-of-sale data wasn’t reliable, underscoring just how important data is to their business.
What began as a response to a pandemic evolved into a playbook for survival. With third-party delivery, QR codes, and rapid menu changes, the team moved fast, opening the parking lot setup in just 60 days. “We’re probably the world’s most successful parking lot,” Michael joked, sharing how they adapted tech and operations on the fly. The key? Treat innovation like SOP – not something you only do when forced.
As the company transitioned into a compressed temporary footprint, Michael realized something had to change internally, too. “We had a restaurant team and a fish market team, but no real collaboration,” he shared.
That compartmentalization had to go. Success in the new model required all departments rowing in the same direction. The result? A more unified, nimble culture built for scale.
It turns out that being evicted makes for great TV. Michael recounted how their internal content experiment, Kings of Fish, started with Facebook videos and eventually grew into a full-fledged Amazon Prime series.
A single Facebook drop led to a 50% spike in sales, proving the power of storytelling. “People buy from the business with the best story,” he said. “We had six copycat restaurants next to us. But customers kept coming to us.”
Technology helped streamline their growth, too. Restaurant365 became central to Ungaro’s daily operations — replacing boxes of moldy paper invoices with digitized systems and daily reports. “Getting a report every day with our numbers in my email is fantastic,” Michael said. “It means I’m not waiting until month-end to find out how we’re doing.”
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