 After traveling around the world, Chris Tompkins returned back to the United States with a dream. He wanted to open a seafood-centric mobile roll bar in California. This would include world-famous oysters and lobster rolls topped with caviar and oogie. They first started at the open-air market known as S'more to Spurk in LA and quickly amassed a loyal following. So when they opened their first brick-and-mortar location in Malibu, people flocked with excitement. It only took about a day and a half after opening for Broad Street Oyster Co. to sell out of all of their inventory. To say they were unprepared would have been an understatement, but Chris and the team quickly adapted to the new volume. Now, this fan favorite continues to grow at a rapid pace and are soon to open their fifth and sixth locations in San Francisco and Huntington Beach. Today we chat with Chris, the founder of Broad Street Oyster Co. about why he needed some tough love from his girlfriend to snap out of his pandemic lockdown thunk, why he initially thought opening in Malibu was a stupid idea, and how Chris has been able to grow the brand so quickly without taking in any outside investment. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Christopher from Broad Street Oyster. Thanks for coming. For people who don't know, what is Broad, what's your company? What do you guys do? Well, my name is Christopher Tompkins and I'm the founder and owner of Broad Street Oyster Co. And we are a New England inspired California based seafood concept. What made you want to start the company? What was the thing that you were like, all right, let's bring this thing to Malibu and what made you want to start it? Well, I definitely never thought that I would be in Malibu, but I knew I wanted to do it in California. So I was raised in upstate New York in the Hudson Valley and basically worked odd jobs from when I was 16 until 25 and had lived all across the country, did a two year backpacking trip around the world, bounced around five different continents. And when I came back, I had no money. I had no idea what I was going to do. But I knew that if I was going to try and start this entrepreneurial venture of mine, I didn't want to do it in New York. And I wanted to move to California. And I figured if as Broad Street Oyster company kind of morphed into what it was at the time, which was a mobile seafood catering pop ups, right? Exactly. OK, exactly. And what were you focused on? Was it was it obviously the name Oyster is in it. Were you always focused on Oyster's first? Oyster's first and lobster roll. OK, those are the two things and I'll tell a quick story about how we met. So during the pandemic, the LA people will remember this is there was no traffic anywhere. And so for me to get from my house to basically your location in Malibu was like 20 minutes. And normally it's like, I mean, even if you go right now, it might be 45 minutes to an hour. And so my wife and I were like missing a piece of home being from New England. And so your your lobster roll became like that slice of home. And it was like this crazy sort of like emotional, but you know, nostalgic moment every time we had your lobster roll. And so much that I was like taking pictures and obviously posting it on Instagram and sharing just like what it meant to me. And then the LA LA Mag picked up the photo and then they tagged you guys. And then it was like, I don't know, there was like a bromance made. I was I fell in love at that point. And then I think I was going like every other day. I remember seeing you out there a lot, especially during those days. And those days were definitely stressful. But for me, it felt way less stressful than the couple of years before I even had the chance to open up in Malibu. Yeah. What made you want to open up that location there? I didn't. Okay. I was doing pop-ups seven days a week. And it was working. Yes. You know, I was, I was setting up outside of breweries, wineries, festivals, whoever would let me set up my oyster cart. That's where I was. And I was on the road for about two and a half years doing that seven days a week and did well enough where I was able to buy, you know, a second van and then hire a couple of my buddies. And then we were all doing it together every single day, around eight to 10 events a week. And for me, I thought that I had made it. And one of the big events that I was able to participate in was Smorgasburg LA, which was where you are now. Yeah. That was like a breakthrough for me. And I was there and someone showed up as I'm working the, the plancha and this guy's like, do you want to restaurant in Malibu? I'm like, no, I definitely don't. And why now? What was your adversion at the time to the restaurant? I had been to Malibu, I think twice in the three or four years at that point when I was living in Los Angeles. And I knew it was a far drive. Yes. I didn't know who the customer base was. Okay. And it just sounded expensive. Yeah. And you're probably right. Okay. You were right about those three things. Yep. And I ended up getting a phone call from one of, from that gentleman's business associate, who we actually had a mutual friend. So he's like, Hey, that guy who was there represents this multi-billion dollar real estate company. Call him. He's like, what do you have to lose? And at the time I had just saved up like my first ever $20,000. I'm like, I have that to lose. And he goes, just do it and call them up. So I call them up and basically they pitched me on a summer long pop-up. We're going to call it a summer long residency inside Malibu village in an old burger restaurant that hadn't been doing well. And I still didn't want to do it. Ended up having a couple of conversations with their team, put together this very rudimentary pitch deck for it. I was like, all right, I'll see if they bite. Like maybe we'll see what happens. How to zoom with their executive team. And they're like, yeah, we love it, but you have to do it in like a month. And that was the stipulation. And what do you think they fell in love with? Like, what do you think they saw when they first met you at some orgasm board? What was the thing? Well, what I was doing at that point was I was making it more than just a pop-up. Like I was bringing my own bar stools and people could sit along our little raw bar that we set up. And I was bringing, I don't know if I could admit this or not, but like I was giving out free tall boys a Budweiser because we couldn't sell liquor. And it felt like more than just waiting in line and grabbing the lobster roll. Like we were trying to create a six seat restaurant everywhere we went. Smorgasburg, Hollywood Night Market, any of the pop-ups that we were doing in Santa Barbara or downtown LA. And I think that they kind of saw what we were doing. Like we were doing razor clams and box crab and sea urchin and caviar and oysters on the half shell and lobster rolls in parking lots. Just give me a window into what's the thing selling the most. And so was it, was it the oysters or was it the lobster? What's the, well, like, what are your percentage of sales? The lobster roll just took off. Okay. So that became the hit. Yeah. And that has, that's still the center of our universe. When you say, you mean like 60% or is it more like 80% of what you do? It's, it's always hovered around 50 to 60%. Okay. That's a single item. So that's your hook. That's your staple. Exactly. Okay. So, so this guy, you get, you accept the terms or I assume you make it. So like it's a, it's a easy, convenient thing for you. It feels less risky. There's probably some financial, maybe they gave you a little free time or something to figure it out. And then what happened, what happened when you opened? We opened up on July 4th, 2019. And we still had other events that we were doing that day. We threw that restaurant together in less than a week. And I spent the entire day before we opened driving a rental truck because our other vans were being used for events. And I was buying stuff from thrift stores that I thought would work as decor. And I was buying kegs of Budweiser from Bevmo because we still didn't have our beer or my license and solo cups. And we had a couple of our other guys prepping all of the product for the next morning and just trying to get things ready to go. And we've never had a restaurant and we're like, all right, well, we'll need food and we'll need this and we need that. And we unloaded everything at two or three a.m. on July 4th. I went home and slept for a couple of hours, picked up three of my friends because they didn't have cars and we drove together to open the restaurant. And we opened at 11 a.m. And there was about like six people in line already. And I was like, wow, this is great. Well, why do you think that was? Was it just from they sort of met you before you think? Exactly. Yeah. So I had no idea I was asking them. And then some of them I recognized, but they showed up because they had been to one of our pop-ups. And then we just started to capture people who were walking around Malibu Village. And it turns out I never knew this, but we had a pretty decent following when we opened up. And I never thought or felt that way, but they showed up. Yeah. And then did you sell out completely? So we sold out, I think the next day. Like we had enough product come in July 4th, July 5th. And then I think we sold out the second half of the second day. And what's going through your head at that point? Are you like, is this going to continue? Is this just sort of like a quick hit? People are excited right now. I don't think that they were that excited, though. Like we weren't doing crazy numbers. Like we were doing one for one, like dollar for dollar at the off-sites as we were at the restaurant. So because of the business that I had built, it was able to kind of subsidize what we were doing at the restaurant. And for me, I was looking at the restaurant, like, we're not going to make any money here. Like that's all I kept thinking about. I'm like, this is a great opportunity. Sure. It's marketing based on your story. It's marketing. It looks fun. And we just ran with it. And it was a three month pop-up. We ran it all three months. We did OK. Nothing spectacular. They asked if we wanted to extend it to the end of the year. And I begrudgingly did it. I was like, I guess we'll do it. And at the end of 2019, we get into serious negotiations for a longer term lease. And that December of 2019, it was dreadful. It was our first winter in Malibu and there were days we would do two hundred dollars, three hundred dollars. Wow. So I would do more on the street. Yeah, of course. And I'm like, man, this is not great. Ended up signing the lease anyway. And it was like a switch, like someone just turned the switch on and people just showed up. I have no I still try and think about what happened. But that end of December, January, February, that's like pre shut down. Right. So three months before everything gets destroyed. And we just took off like a rocket. And we do we were putting up two X what we had done during the summer in December, January, February. And no idea why, you know, I think that it was just organic momentum. Like, I think that it just took. You stuck with it. Yeah. Yeah. And it just took a bit of time and then it just hit. And Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we were packed. I think this is the hard part of like restaurant touring is it takes so long for you to actually learn who your customer is, what they like. You have to make the adjustments in real time. And then at some point that can happen. But you've got to stick with it. You have to be consistent. And it's so hard, I think, for like when you're in the moment of like, like when I talked to the cousin's main lobster guy, they had a retail location and he hates it, hated it because for him, at least the way he concocted it or sort of what he tells himself is lobster is a special thing. You know, and so in his mind, having the truck, having it mobile is like the nice surprise in your day that you didn't expect. But now you can do it today. You can go ahead and buy that lobster today. And the odds of you buying one every single day are aren't high. And so he loved the truck component and hated the retail component for this reason. He just it was like too much. It like he thinks his product is special and it is, but he doesn't think it's like an everyday thing. So to hear your, you know, obviously your take on it is different, which is great. And it's still working. And so it's a really interesting thing. What happened during COVID? I know what happened with me and you for that. What happened the day that the shutdown was announced. I'm watching the guests just spill out of the restaurant slowly. Like you look at them, they're looking at their phone. Everyone's getting the same alert at the same time. Some people would, you know, they hung around a little bit longer than others. But people were, I think everyone was just taking it in. And I'll never forget that crowd of people that were sitting there on that Sunday and I'm looking around and like, man, this is definitely not good. And I think people were, you know, I think we were at that time, we were closing at like nine p.m. or something like that. And people were out by seven. So from seven to nine, it was myself, a couple of my friends who I was working with and we just drank a bunch of wine and shucked oysters. And we're just looking at each other like we are. This is the end. Yeah. But yeah, that's and at that point, like if we go back in time, I remember we didn't know what was going to what was going to happen. And in my mind, I'm like, this might be the end. And I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into just with the business and with the world. And we thought, what else should we do except get drunk and eat oysters? That's exactly what we did. And I woke up the next morning with a really bad hangover. And my girlfriend, Jenna, she looks at me and she's like, you better figure this out. Like you felt sorry for yourself last night, but you have like today. Get it going. And that's awesome, by the way. And that's what we did. She would do that. Yeah. Like I called a 24 hour banner printer. I threw up this mock logo that said Malibu's newest drive through called this 24 hour banner printer. I'm like, how big can you print this? And he's like, 30 feet. I go perfect. It was 20 feet by 30 feet. We get it printed. I climb on the roof of this building. All these other big corporations were boarding up their shops. Like there are companies that I won't name, but they were out. You can name them. Tell me. All right. Lululemon was doing it. Lululemon, SoulCycle, Levi's, they were gone. It was me and the shoe repairman, Levan, that I'm still friends with. And that was it. And I'm looking around. I'm like, man, all right, well, we got to do something. I'm here. We're not closing. We were allowed to stay open under the temporary order and all that. And I had no other option. I just signed my life away less than 30 days before. That's when the lease went into effect. It is the land. Are you having any negotiation with the landlord? Are you guys chatting with each other? Nothing. I didn't talk to anybody. OK. You just went into action mode. Yeah. And I climbed on the roof of that building. I hung that banner facing the PCH, went back downstairs. And we kept our core group of employees and team. And we were just finding stuff to do. Clean the restaurant, do inventory, rearrange this. We made a little retail counter up front with bottles of wine that we had left. And then I walked over to the fire lane that we had behind our building. And I opened up our window and turned the tiki bar around. And that was our drive. That's your drive through. Yeah, I remember that. And we just waited and people would kind of show up at the front. People would show up in their car at the drive through. And we never did worse. The numbers that we were doing were not worse than our first December. So I'll never forget, it was the first Wednesday, December, 2019. It was like 300 bucks. OK. We never did that bad, even during the first couple of weeks of the shutdown. That's crazy. And that first weekend came around and we got destroyed. Everyone showed up. There was no traffic, as you mentioned, you know, you take me over an hour, hour and a half to get from Silver Lake to Malibu, and I was doing in 30 minutes. Yeah. And everyone had that same same feeling. Yeah. And they showed up that first weekend and we were cranking. It's like you went viral in some way, literally in the first week of the shutdown. Yeah. It's just like that. And I remember, like, at least for me, when I would go at the time, anyway, you've since expanded, but I would go and my wife and I, we'd sit like on the curb or we'd sit like by the water. We would just like make, we'd find a stump, basically, and just sit and eat the lobster roll. But you've expanded that. I mean, you have so much outdoor space now, which is so smart, like an outdoor patio. But tell me, when this was happening during COVID, at some point, are you like, this is going to end soon? Like, is a part of you living in complete terror, but also elated? I don't even know. I don't. I can't even I'm trying to remember what my feelings and thoughts were. It was just wake up every day, go to work, like get this done. Like we needed to keep pushing. And I felt like I didn't have another option. It's like I woke up, went to the restaurant, ran the restaurant, go home. And then I didn't have time to think of what else to do. Yeah. Did anything get weird for you in terms of where you're sourcing or any like what they think? Yeah. Right. A lot of our distributors who work with the fishermen and farmers that we work with stop working. There were days that Jen and I would have to drive up tomorrow Bay, meet the oyster farmer that we know, load up coolers of oysters and drive our van all the way back down and start service. So the supply chain was definitely getting funky and impacted. We tried to do whatever we could to, you know, work around it. But in some way, too, I remember you guys became like the darling of social media. I mean, it was really like you were providing like a refuge for so many people. And during this time, is any is your mindset going like expansion mode yet? Are you still surviving or are you getting approached by it's not your landlord seeing you be the only person crushing it? Yes. And so I imagine if I'm your landlord, I'm thinking to myself, let's let's do more. Let's keep going. Right. And what's the appetite for that? What were those conversations like? That took place probably three or four months after the beginning of the shutdown and an Italian an Italian gelato company went under and then there's an empty coffee shop. And they were next year, right? Yeah. There were a couple of doors down, but we had a shared hallway. They had a massive walk-in refrigerator. They had storage and they had, you know, a space for coffee and ice cream. I love coffee and ice cream and that's Broad Street Coffee Co. And really, we just took it because we needed we wanted the additional signage, which was now in the front of the parking lot. And we wanted to have an extra walk in. And it's like, all right, let's do coffee and ice cream. And that's how that started. And that was with the same landlord. But expansion mode wasn't really on top of mind. It was probably not until summer of 2020 where I'm like, yeah, this is something like we had our one year anniversary of Malibu, we're cranking. We kept gaining more and more, you know, followers and the revenue was getting higher and higher and higher. And I'm like, this is this is what I've wanted it to be. Yeah, you've sort of achieved it. It felt right. And are you at some point thinking private equity? Are you thinking other dollars? Are you thinking investors? I own 100% of Broad Street Oyster Company. I've taken zero outside money, you know, next year with the two new openings. We're on track to do roughly like 25 to 30 million dollars in revenue. That's huge. I have three locations. We'll have six. Wow. So we'll have Malibu, Santa Barbara, Grand Central Market in downtown. Coffee company. That's right. I forgot about the central market. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And those are the four that are open right now. Where are we going to build one together? Where are we going to do that? I got to pick the spot. Where do you want to be? I don't know. I know we're opening up one more on the pier and Huntington Beach, which is unbelievable, by the way. Can you talk about how you got that property? That is the most most iconic property. So we were doing an event on the pier last year and Jen and I were looking at this space. And was it available? It was under construction. OK, Ruby's was a long time tenant. And you know, Ruby's went bankrupt. The landlord's doing like basic TI on the space. And I'm looking at this spot because we're setting up for this dinner. We did outstanding in the field on the Huntington Beach Pier. And they use that as like storage and everything else. And I'm like, look, peeking around and we're looking at this space. I'm like, my God, this would be home run. And I had actually been there probably five or six years before I was driving around Southern California. My brother, who came to visit and we were just kind of like checking out the we went to Malibu, we went to Huntington Beach and we walked the end of the pier, ate upstairs at Ruby's, you know, cheeseburger and a shake, you know, fast forward to today. And we're a month away from opening up our restaurant there. But we were looking at it and we're like, this is perfect. And ended up talking to the right people. It took about a year and then it all happened. Have you changed anything menu wise? Have you refined that maybe gotten smaller? We've actually gotten larger. OK, so I think that we're kind of at a weird, not weird, but it's an interesting point right now where I think that so many concepts either are going upscale or trying to strip it down and do a scalable, high volume concept. And I think that we're in this very strange in between. You know, in Malibu, we have a pretty expansive menu and we're doing 1,500 covers a day. That's absurd. That's a lot. Yeah, that's crazy. It's a lot of people. That's a lot of people every day. It's a lot of food. It would be a lot easier if I only did lobster rolls like a lot of other concepts that I know that are based, you know, they've scaled across the country. But that's not what I want to do. Like if I wanted to do a sandwich concept where there's three menu items, that's what I would do, but I'm not. I want to try and push that menu to the absolute limit. That's I feel like that's what we're doing. I remember so that I think you were probably, at least in my life, the first oyster that offer the first lobster roll that offered uni on top and then also caviar on top. And that was like a new thing. And I'd never seen that before. And I remember going to I did this thing where I went to Boston and I went to Neptune Oyster. I've been there. Yeah. They have a great lobster roll. And I did this thing of like, who has the better lobster roll? And it was you and it was them. And so I made like this little scorecard and it was basically like the lobster, the bun, the French fries and then caviar, uni, that whole thing. But Neptune didn't offer caviar or uni on the lobster. Roll at the time. And so you were like the de facto winner. So Broad Street won in this little Instagram thing I did. And then the next time I went to Neptune Oyster, you could get both of those things. That's on the lobster roll. And I was like, I think I did that. I was like, I don't know that they'll tell me, but I'm pretty sure I did that because it was so obvious. It's like, why wouldn't you just put caviar on the lobster roll and make that extra money? And it's so much more delicious. Yeah. And it seems obvious part of the experience. Like you were mentioning earlier how a lobster roll may not be an every day item. I definitely have customers that are eating it more than once a week and probably closer to seven days. But I understand that it's not an every day thing. Yeah. I mean, I wish it was to be honest. Like if you were next door right here, I would go every day easily. I also wish everyone would eat it seven days a week because it'd be great for me. Yeah. And yeah, and it just makes that experience even more. And I was thinking in bed one night, like right before we launched Smorgasburg, I'm like, what do I want to do with this lobster roll? It's like, we're going to have people line up, they'll buy a lobster roll, but I just wanted to add the things that we were selling anyway. It's like, all right, if people are waiting and they're here for this experience, why not make it this over the top decadent, delicious sandwich? Yeah. And that's how it started. What do you think the perfect lobster roll, like what is the perfect lobster roll to you? I'm a traditionalist, so I love it just toasted bun. Okay. Chilled lobster mix. That's it. Simple mayo, some celery. Give me Hellmans or Best Foods, whatever they call it out here. Interesting. Are you like a claw guy? Yeah. What's big, okay. I like knuckle and claw. Knuckle and claw in the lobster roll. I like that you guys give a lot of lobster. Some places don't and I just think that's so weird. Like if I can see a lot of the bread, I'm out. I could show you the Instagram comments that say otherwise, but like I have lobster rolls all across the country and I feel like we're quite generous. Yeah. And like I just had someone yesterday and I'm like, thanks for the tiny lobster roll. I'm like, all right, well, I'll take it. That's pretty funny. What do you want to do after Huntington? So once you open that. We're opening up San Francisco. So you're expanding. Yeah, we have two projects that have been under construction. That was in design meetings all morning for San Francisco and then just a recap for Huntington. Huntington's opening up next month. San Francisco, we're building a, it's inside Gear Daily Square. It's a 100 year old building. Two floors. It's a great building. Same landlord as Malibu. No way. And they're the ones who presented the opportunity to us about a year and a half ago. Okay, when do you open the one in San Francisco? October. There's another seafood place right there right now. There's Hog Island up there. Hog Island, that's it. They're great. Yeah, I love, every time I'm up in San Francisco, that's where we go for lunch. And what do you think long term for you? And so when you think about this business, maybe five years, 10 years from now, like where do you want to be? It seems like right now you're having a really good time and you're sort of picking your spots and you're staying in your lane, but you're doing it your way. And that's really cool. I also love the fact of your story. I mean, there's so many restaurateurs right now, some that we know personally that are like hurting, you know, and they're like stuck. And they're sort of seeing the news and they're seeing the economic climate shift. And the thing I always tell them is like, the only thing that matters is your next move. That's the only thing that matters. And so in your story, when you were talking about how you just went and got the 20 by 30 sign after Jenna said just go, you did it and it worked. You know, and if it didn't work, you would have kept trying other things to make it work. And so I just love that. And I just think I hope restaurateurs sort of find motivation during this time to, it's really, it can be that simple, just try something, do something else, keep it going. But when you think about like for you, the next five to 10 years, how many locations do you want to be at? Do you like where you're at? Do you want this to become like the in and out? Like how do you think about it? I always think about the future. Even like I started this company just under seven years ago and it was with my only $2,000. That was it. I bought a Coleman camping grill from Walmart for a hundred bucks, a couple of folding tables and just started. And I didn't sit down and write out this business plan. And I didn't think about this or that. I just, it was action. And it's now turned into what it is. And I want to keep pushing forward and we have amazing opportunities presented to us literally 10 times a week. It's crazy. And I say no, 99.9% of the time because one of the luxuries that I feel like I have right now is I'm the decision maker. So if I want to open somewhere, I'll open somewhere. And if I don't, I don't. Yeah, you don't have any pressure. There's no board telling you, hey, look, we need to get revenue numbers up. You have a workable model go. I don't know. I don't want to ever have to listen to someone tell me what to do. And even, that's why I started my own business. I'm like, I want to work for myself and I don't want to have to answer to anyone. And that's, it's a great place to be. And I feel like if you're not pushing yourself into this position where you need to answer to someone because they've given you a massive amount of money and a check, like I want to just ride that out for as long as I can. Do you have like a dream project? Maybe Huntington Beach is that, but do you have something on the horizon or something that doesn't exist that you're thinking about? So there's a couple of very fun and in my mind they're dream projects. Some of them are around the world. There's another one, Back East, which is a massive, a massive working dock and fish market and restaurant space in New York. So that's a dream, like bucket list type of project. And like all of those conversations are happening. And it's hard for me to then gauge what the next five or 10 years look like when I definitely could not have predicted the type of growth and success we've had over the last five years. And all of the things that have kind of come my way and the company's way of course. So I don't know what will happen in the next five or 10, but I want to keep pushing and I want to keep growing. And from day one, when I was driving one of my vans around I wanted to be a $100 million a year business. And I remember thinking, I'm like, all right, if I do $100,000 a year on point, blah, blah, blah, close. And then as I got closer and closer and closer, it's like, all right, we're hitting numbers that like it's a much more realistic goal. Yeah, you're approaching it faster. Yeah, another concept that I really want to do is a old school steak and chop house. Like I love it. And I love these institutions, these old restaurants that have been around for decades. And I would love to pay respect to them by doing an homage to New York style, big booths, chop house, maybe pushing around a little zeppelin, shaving prime rib and all that. But who knows? Like I want to keep building this into the absolute best version that it can be. Well, tell people where they can find you, where they can visit you, where they can have the lobster roll. Yeah, so we have our first location, which was in Malibu. We have our coffee and ice cream shop right next door. And both of those are located in Malibu village off the PCH. We have Grand Central Market in downtown LA, which I absolutely love. And we're there seven days a week and then right down the street every Sunday, we're at Smorgasburg, we're still there. We have our location on State Street in Santa Barbara. We have Huntington Beach on the pier. That's opening up in about a month. And then we're opening up in Ghirardelli Square closer to October, November of this year. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for the support and making it to the end of the episode. If you haven't already, please do review and show the episode with your friends. 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