Phillips Foods, Inc. and Seafood Restaurants is a family owned and operated seafood company in the mid-Atlantic region, United States. Phillips Foods, Inc., seafood manufacturers as well as restaurateurs, specializes in crab meat and crab cakes, and produces a line of fish and shrimp products. The company is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Phillips Seafood Restaurants have casual dining, buffet service and carryout.
History
In 1914, Augustus E. Phillips established the company's first seafood processing plant on Hooper's Island in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. The A.E. Phillips packing plant processed seafood from many of the watermen in the region. In 1956, after a surplus season of crabs, son Brice Phillips and wife Shirley opened the first “crab shack” in Ocean City, Maryland. Brice and Shirley began building a new dining room each year at Phillips Crab House until it finally seated 1400 people.
In 2002, the company was sued for violating the Lanham Act, a statute that provides consumer protection against false advertising. The plaintiff's claimed that Phillips was deceiving its customers after it said that it was following the original recipe while it used Asian crab meat instead of Maryland blue crab. The lawsuit was dismissed by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, and the dismissal was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit.[2]
Phillips Seafood Restaurants currently has 5 company-owned restaurants along the eastern coast of the United States, as well as a network of franchise locations in airports, travel plazas, casinos and sporting arenas.