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Santa Monica Seafood
Santa Monica Seafood, a full-service fresh and frozen seafood processor, distributor and retailer, sought to reinvent its retail operation in its hometown of Santa Monica, Caifornia.
The brand worked with Shook Kelley to create an environment where Santa Monica Seafood could tell its story, while selling fresh seafood and getting into the food service business, too. The result is the Santa Monica Seafood Market, Cafe & Oyster Bar.
Santa Monica Seafood is a storied brand with a legacy in Southern California that stretches back many decades. But the brand was not leveraging its history, traditions or expertise inside of its retail environment. Shook Kelley’s engagement with Santa Monica Seafood began by extracting the oral history of the company’s family members, as well as studying existing seafood retailers, seafood destinations and other seafood restaurants. This led to a new brand strategy direction for Santa Monica Seafood.
The new store and cafe experience tells the Santa Monica Seafood story in subtle and overlapping layers. Taking advantage of a rear entrance to the site—adapted from a former fast food restaurant—the unfavorable entrance tunnel became a hallway to highlight stories of well-respected local chefs who rely on the brand to provide their restaurants with top quality seafood. As many customers were unaware that Santa Monica Seafood supplies restaurants and is a full-service processor and distributor, an enormous market price sign board inside the store further reinforced and communicated the fresh quality story and the perception of constant product turnover.
People feel like they have access to the very best seafood in the entire region
An ambience of Italian Mediterranean, combined with Santa Monica coast, helps set the background for the family’s roots story and the brand’s authority in fresh quality seafood, as well as great dining. The store features more than 60 linear feet of seafood refrigerated cases, a full service café offering a wide selection for lunch and dinner, an Oyster Bar, a wine selection to complement the seafood and a food market that offers fresh bread, marinades, sauces, vegetables and everything else needed to make a complete meal.
Building on the success of their first hometown location, Santa Monica Seafood has created cafe market destinations in Costa Mesa and Santa Barbara. Diners enjoy the cozy confines and even note that when the tables are full, they can spend their “wait time” shopping for seafood and looking at the amazing selection the market offers.
Above all, the Santa Monica Seafood Market Cafe has finally given this great brand a chance to engage with its audience in a new and powerful way, creating a destination for people to come together and eat seafood in a unique environment. In Shook Kelley’s post-evaluation at the site, our most revealing finding was to simply overhear the conversations people had upon entering the space: a pause to take it all in, and the inevitable re-telling of the brand’s mythology. People feel like they’re part of something special, that they’re “on the inside” of this great brand that supplies top seafood restaurants and has access to the very best seafood in the entire region. In short, they feel like they’ve joined the Santa Monica Seafood tribe.
The brand worked with Shook Kelley to create an environment where Santa Monica Seafood could tell its story, while selling fresh seafood and getting into the food service business, too. The result is the Santa Monica Seafood Market, Cafe & Oyster Bar.
Santa Monica Seafood is a storied brand with a legacy in Southern California that stretches back many decades. But the brand was not leveraging its history, traditions or expertise inside of its retail environment. Shook Kelley’s engagement with Santa Monica Seafood began by extracting the oral history of the company’s family members, as well as studying existing seafood retailers, seafood destinations and other seafood restaurants. This led to a new brand strategy direction for Santa Monica Seafood.
The new store and cafe experience tells the Santa Monica Seafood story in subtle and overlapping layers. Taking advantage of a rear entrance to the site—adapted from a former fast food restaurant—the unfavorable entrance tunnel became a hallway to highlight stories of well-respected local chefs who rely on the brand to provide their restaurants with top quality seafood. As many customers were unaware that Santa Monica Seafood supplies restaurants and is a full-service processor and distributor, an enormous market price sign board inside the store further reinforced and communicated the fresh quality story and the perception of constant product turnover.
People feel like they have access to the very best seafood in the entire region
An ambience of Italian Mediterranean, combined with Santa Monica coast, helps set the background for the family’s roots story and the brand’s authority in fresh quality seafood, as well as great dining. The store features more than 60 linear feet of seafood refrigerated cases, a full service café offering a wide selection for lunch and dinner, an Oyster Bar, a wine selection to complement the seafood and a food market that offers fresh bread, marinades, sauces, vegetables and everything else needed to make a complete meal.
Building on the success of their first hometown location, Santa Monica Seafood has created cafe market destinations in Costa Mesa and Santa Barbara. Diners enjoy the cozy confines and even note that when the tables are full, they can spend their “wait time” shopping for seafood and looking at the amazing selection the market offers.
Above all, the Santa Monica Seafood Market Cafe has finally given this great brand a chance to engage with its audience in a new and powerful way, creating a destination for people to come together and eat seafood in a unique environment. In Shook Kelley’s post-evaluation at the site, our most revealing finding was to simply overhear the conversations people had upon entering the space: a pause to take it all in, and the inevitable re-telling of the brand’s mythology. People feel like they’re part of something special, that they’re “on the inside” of this great brand that supplies top seafood restaurants and has access to the very best seafood in the entire region. In short, they feel like they’ve joined the Santa Monica Seafood tribe.