About Phillips Foods
The Legend of Phillips
The story of Phillips dates back to 1914 as a quality-driven, family-owned company
on a small island in the Chesapeake Bay called Hoopers Island. Augustus E. Phillips
established our first seafood processing plant on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and
from that spawned a nearly 100 year history for Phillips. Chapter two begins in 1956
when son Brice Phillips and his wife, Shirley, took the surplus of crabs from the
plant to a small resort town on the shore and opened the first “crab shack” in Ocean
City, MD. That first location has evolved into Phillips Seafood Restaurants which
now operates seven high-volume restaurants in the Eastern United States, as well
as a growing network of franchises in major airports around the country. Today,
our company remains family-owned and operated by three generations of the Phillips
family.
In 1990, son Steve Phillips started chapter three in the history of the family business
by finding a way to satisfy the growing demand the restaurants had for quality crab
meat. He discovered that there was blue swimming crab in Southeast Asia that was
nearly identical to the crab in the Chesapeake Bay. Phillips began opening crab
processing facilities around the world to meet the demand for crab meat that the
domestic market couldn’t fill. Today, the company sells their crab meat to their
own restaurant guests, consumers in grocery stores and other restaurant chefs for
their own crab dishes.
Owning and operating plants as well as restaurants has placed Phillips in a unique
niche in the foodservice world. Phillips understands the needs of restaurateurs
and the demand for quality products.
The “original” crab house restaurant
Founders Brice & Shirley catching crabs
A busy Saturday night in the kitchen