Seafood Star: July 2000
Naked Fish exposes the fresh side of seafood
Joey Crugnale is Livin’ la Vida Loca with his Cuban-inspired seafood concept
Restaurateur Joey Crugnale has a knack for taking common foods like ice cream and pizza and making them cutting-edge menu items.
He combined ice cream and candy to create the national Steve’s Ice Cream chain, inspiration for the gourmet ice cream movement. Then, Crugnale successfully paired wood-fired brick ovens and pizza to create Bertucci’s, which also became a national chain and went public in 1991.
Now Crugnale is testing the waters with the Naked Fish Wood Fired Grill casual seafood concept, which casts seafood in a funky Caribbean/Cuban-theme. This time around, Crugnale is juxtaposing minimally seasoned, fresh seafood against the sensual aura of the Latino movement. Simply put: Crugnale is making seafood sexy.
"There’s a passion with Latin music and foods that you don’t get with anything else," he says.
That passion has helped fuel strong growth for the privately held Woburn, Mass., Naked Restaurants Inc., which also operates the four-unit Jumbalaya Cajun/Mexican concept. Crugnale has opened six Naked Fish restaurants in the greater Boston area since the first location debuted a year ago in Westboro, Mass.
Each location averages $4 million to $6 million in sales. Naked Restaurants is on track to make $37 million in sales this year, up almost four-fold from the $9.7 million the company notched in 1999. Not a bad return for Crugnale, who is funding the concept by himself.
Naked Fish has already drawn accolades: it was chosen by Nation’s Restaurant News as one of the publication’s Hot Concepts for 2000. The concepts chosen for the NRN awards are those with innovative, cutting-edge operations with strong consumer appeal.
The concept’s appeal is clearly demonstrated by its warm reception in Boston, a city known worldwide for seafood and home to the revered Legal Sea Foods chain.
However, Crugnale says there was a void in the Boston restaurant scene for his "fresh" take on seafood – fresh meaning seafood cooked on a wood-fired grill with olive oil, lemon juice and herbs. This preparation method allows diners to experience the full flavor of their finfish and shellfish.
His confidence in Naked Fish is evident in the concept’s motto: "To be fresh, it must be naked" – a direct take-off on Legal’s "If it isn’t fresh, it isn’t legal" slogan.
Crugnale says his "fashion" sense is what separates Naked Fish from other seafood concepts.
"This business is a fashion business. Legal [Sea Foods] is one fashion, we’re something else. Red Lobster is a different fashion. Fish is fish – it’s just how you twist it," says Crugnale.
Aside from the "Naked" fish preparations, patrons also have the option of "Not-So-Naked" pan-fried entrées served with sauces. Offers include roasted Chilean sea bass with tomatoes, capers and kalamata olives or peppercorn tuna with a Cuban rum-cream sauce. For the less adventurous, there’s even fish and chips.
In addition to almost 20 seafood entrées on the printed menu, which changes every five to six weeks, there are four to five daily specials at each unit. The menu also features a dozen appetizers, such as Mussels Sofrito and Grilled Sugar Cane Skewered Shrimp.
Naked Fish’s food wouldn’t be complete without funky beverages, which rack up 28 percent of the concept’s sales. The restaurant offers Cuban drinks like the Mojito and the Habana Colada.
An open-kitchen design gives each location an entertainment aspect. And the interior design is straight from the art deco streets of Miami’s South Beach.
Those "twists" Crugnale has taken in his 25 years in the industry have made going out on a limb with a new restaurant concept seem like old hat – but seafood is an entirely new realm for him.
One aspect of the seafood business that Crugnale wasn’t prepared for despite his years in the restaurant industry was the reliance on a wild supply, for which costs change frequently.
"The only [price] that changed pizza was the price of cheese," notes Crugnale.
Naked purchases its seafood through a distributor and so far hasn’t attempted to buy through online seafood exchanges.
But Crugnale isn’t daunted by the challenges seafood poses. He has four more Naked Fish locations scheduled to open by the end of the year and plans to roll out four or five restaurants annually for the next several years.
After taking Bertucci’s public, expectations are that Crugnale will do the same with Naked Fish – which he says is a possibility.
Seafood may be a challenge for Crugnale, but his love of the restaurant business and the people engaged in it will ensure that he perseveres.
"It’s the most exciting business in the world. It has the most risks. It’s the most dangerous," he says. "But I’m around people, and I love that."
Fiona Robinson can be e-mailed at frobinson@divcom.com.
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