Szabo Tries for a Hit With Seafood at Big A

During the seventh-inning stretch at Anaheim Stadium, Don Regan of Balboa Peninsula dashed over to a concession stand and snatched a snack that any red-blooded, red hot-munching California Angels fan might better expect to find at the Ritz.

Oysters on the half shell.

Regan--a fan with an appetite for both seafood and Angels victories--can now feed both of his penchants in the same place. In May, Szabo Food Service Inc. opened a seafood bar at the Big A, and the company now operates what industry executives say may be the nation’s only stadium seafood concession stand.

The nautical eatery is one in a series of marketing moves aimed at upscale Angels fans, primarily from south Orange County. To appeal to their expensive tastes, high-ticket imported beers were introduced at the stadium last year and have sold well. Now Szabo hopes the same fans who go for foreign beer--many of them professionals who sit in stadium loges--will swear off hot dogs and develop a taste for more trendy food such as oysters, shrimp and crab salads.

But early indications are that seafood at the Big A is getting few nibbles. Seafood sales are averaging less than $500 per game compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars made from other concessions. The major stumbling blocks are not only the high price tags--oysters cost $5.25 and shrimp cocktails go for $6.25--but the incongruity of fish being served at a ballpark.

“Sure, I like fish.” said one Angels fan, squirting mustard on her kosher hot dog. “But what’s fish got to do with baseball?”

Not much, and perhaps that is why the $17,000 seafood bar is so far, well, floundering.

“The business is nothing to write home about,” said Bill Corry, Szabo’s concessions manager. “But the seafood bar is making money on a monthly basis.”

Nevertheless, the $100,000 that the seafood bar is expected to gross in sales over the 81-game home baseball season is what some of Szabo’s traditional concession stands gross in five games, he said.

Although Szabo is regarded as an innovator in stadium concessions, some in the concession industry are skeptical whether any concessionaire can make fish fly. “You can put in 10,000 offbeat items like that,” said an executive at Stevens Co., the food service operator at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, “but the majority of fans want hot dogs.”

But Szabo’s Corry said there is a slow trend away from hot dogs at stadiums. Szabo introduced a number of offbeat food items at the stadium this year, including deep fried chicken strips, deep fried zucchini, and even corn-on-the-cob. Next year Szabo may introduce “gourmet” hamburgers, primarily because the mushroom-decked burgers are so popular with young professionals at chains such as Fuddruckers and Flakey Jake’s.

And with appearance becoming more of a factor in the food industry, the seafood bar is glass enclosed and has ceiling fans whirring more for decoration than function. Corry said business has been slow primarily because most Angels fans simply don’t know about the seafood bar. Stadium signs have recently been posted that direct patrons to the stand on the Club Level. Corry predicts that Los Angeles Rams fans--who commonly buy higher-ticket food items--will be better seafood customers.

Ron Liese, a West Coast marketing manager for Driltech Inc., stopped in the seafood bar before an Angels game last week and ordered shrimp. He said his kids eat hot dogs but he goes for fish. “I have a greater level of confidence in the quality of shrimp than hot dogs,” he said.

But not everyone does. Stanley F. Hansen, a Costa Mesa-based nutritionist, says he’d sooner buy a stadium hot dog than stadium seafood. For example, the harbors where oysters grow are commonly contaminated with mercury, lead and petroleum waste products, he said. What’s more, he added, “seafood will spoil much more rapidly.”

The seafood bar also sells fruit salad plates for $5.75, but the fruit salad is even a slower seller than the fish, said Vicki Hurst, food service employee. She said that just one fan bought a fruit plate during one recent Monday night game. “The lady told me she was on a diet,” said Hurst.

Roger Mendoza, a Walnut construction worker, grabbed a $6.75 combination seafood plate before the game. His menu would increase around the fifth or sixth inning, he admitted. “I’m still gonna get a hot dog.”