In honor of National Seafood Month in October, we sat down with Ralph Rubio, the man responsible for popularizing the fish taco in the U.S., at the original Rubio\u2019s Coastal Grill location in Pacific Beach, where it all began. BBP: How did you come up with the concept for creating a restaurant focused on fish tacos? RR: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved down here to go to SDSU. Some of the upperclassmen wanted to go down to San Felipe, Mexico for spring break to get fish tacos. I said, “Fish tacos, what are those?” I\u2019d never been there before and never had a fish taco. We got there in the late morning, so the taco shops were just starting to open up, and I had my first fish taco and just fell in love. We had fish tacos for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next four or five days. Back at school, I started getting into the restaurant industry \u2013 I was busing tables at The Old Spaghetti Factory and then became a waiter. I had this love of fish tacos that translated into this idea to open a restaurant in San Diego to serve fish tacos and Coronas, because no one was doing it here, so I saw a market need. It all came together 10 years after I had my first fish taco. My dad and I became partners; he put up the financing, and I had the operations experience by then. I\u2019d been working as a manager at Harbor House restaurant in Seaport Village, so I had some experience to start a business. He said let\u2019s find a restaurant, so I was looking through the Union-Tribune and found this hamburger shop for sale called Mickey\u2019s Burgers (previously an Orange Julius store) for $70,000, which was way outside our budget. My dad said, “Well, that\u2019s what he\u2019s asking for, but let\u2019s negotiate.” He told me to go across the street to the 7-Eleven, park my car there and count the number of customers going to Mickey\u2019s, because he was claiming he had this big, booming business. I sat there for a week, and no one came into his restaurant. So we went back to him and said, “Hey, look, you really don\u2019t have any business,” but he still wasn\u2019t willing to go much lower on the price. And my dad said, “Hey, call him up and offer him $15,000 cash.” And I told him there was no way he\u2019s going to take that, but I called and made the offer. I made the call, and Mickey yelled at me and hung up the phone. My dad told me to give him a few minutes and see what happens \u2013 sure enough, Mickey called back and said he\u2019ll take it. And that\u2019s how we started the business, opening on Jan. 25, 1983.
\nThe restaurant started as a walk-up taco stand with a few uncovered picnic tables outside and a changeable letterboard menu. To take orders, I had to bend forward to hear customers through the glass window. It was very much a family business \u2013 my mom and dad would help out during busy times \u2013 and we only had one paid employee, so my brothers and sister were very involved. BBP: Why did you choose Pacific Beach for your first location? RR: There\u2019s a big PB connection for me starting in the late 1970s, when I lived near Fanuel Street and Pacific Beach Drive. I started out in South Mission Beach and worked my way up to PB. Pacific Beach is a very exciting, dynamic place. I just love that we have our roots here; it\u2019s always meant a lot to me since I was a resident [Rubio now lives in Encinitas]. Half of my family still lives here, so I\u2019ll always have a connection here. And this restaurant will always be a landmark in PB. This is the only store that has a marquee outside that\u2019s grandfathered in, so we can change the message every month or so. I usually email the team and they get up on the ladder to change it. We chose PB for the first restaurant since our target audience was college students who had heard of a fish taco before. So after the PB location came the SDSU location; that also fit those criteria. Since the original location was so busy, we opened the next one on Grand Avenue closer to the beach. And now we have almost 50 restaurants in San Diego County. The original fish taco is still the best-selling item on the menu, and we just sold our 200 millionth fish taco this past summer. The plan was always for Rubio\u2019s to be a chain restaurant \u2013 I knew if I could develop a prototype that was scalable then I could have a bigger business. I thought if I could have 10 or 15 restaurants, that would be great. Today, we have close to 200 stores and more than 4,000 employees. BBP: How did you come up with recipes for your earliest menus? RR: Both my parents are from Mexico, so I grew up around a lot of delicious Mexican food. I was very focused on the fish taco and had written down the ingredients for beer batter when I was in San Felipe \u2013 which are flour, water, beer, oregano and mustard \u2013 but I didn\u2019t know the proportions. I carried that list around in my wallet for years. So when I started the restaurant, my brother and I sat in the kitchen for a couple weeks and tried different recipes until we got the beer batter just right. Then we experimented with several different types of fish \u2014 we started with red snapper, then shark \u2014 but ultimately settled on Alaskan pollock about a year into it and have been with it ever since. BBP: What is your role in the company these days? RR: My primary work is around culinary now to develop new products and improve existing products. I also spend a lot of time in the field, visiting restaurants and making sure the food is being executed properly. I go in the kitchen and meet team members, shake hands and get to know people. It\u2019s important to stay connected to the team, because you can\u2019t run a restaurant from behind a desk. I\u2019m also involved with marketing, public relations and real estate selection, and I sit on the board of directors. BBP: After more than 32 years, how do you stay inspired and keep the momentum going? RR: When your name is on anything, that\u2019s an inspiration, I think \u2013 you have your reputation to protect. My son wants to get into the business \u2013 he\u2019s in business school right now \u2013 so maybe down the road we\u2019ll start a new concept together. Or if he wants to get involved with Rubio\u2019s, I\u2019m more likely to stick around for a long time. But for now, it\u2019s all about Rubio\u2019s, and I think there\u2019s still a lot of potential. Rubio\u2019s will continue to expand. If you\u2019re in this ever-changing marketplace, you can\u2019t sit still \u2014 we\u2019re always growing, moving ahead and trying something new and different. Rubio\u2019s Coastal Grill is headquartered in Carlsbad. Visit the original Rubio\u2019s location at 4504 East Mission Bay Drive or the third location at 910 Grand Ave. For more information, visit rubios.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In honor of National Seafood Month in October, we sat down with Ralph Rubio, the man responsible for popularizing the fish taco in the U.S., at the original Rubio\u2019s Coastal Grill location in Pacific Beach, where it all began. BBP: How did you come up with the concept for creating a restaurant focused on fish […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":265456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Ralph Rubio talks fish tacos, Pacific Beach, and his expanding business","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}