Skippers Seafood & Chowder House

Skippers
FormerlySkipper's Fish and Chips Chowder House
Skipper's Seafood 'n' Chowder House
TypeIndependent, nonexclusive, site-specific licensees
IndustryFast food, seafood, licensing, retail
Founded1969 (1969) in Bellevue, Washington, U.S.
FounderHerb Rosen
Number of locations
50+[1] (2024)
Area served
Pacific Northwest
ProductsFish and chips, clam chowder, seafood
ParentHarbor Wholesale
Websiteskippers.com
Skippers sign in Pocatello, Idaho. This location has since closed.

Skippers Seafood & Chowder House (historically Skipper's Seafood 'n' Chowder House) is an American quick-service seafood restaurant brand from the Pacific Northwest, known for its fish and chips and clam chowder. Founded in 1969 in Bellevue, Washington, by businessman Herb Rosen, the chain grew to more than 200 company-owned restaurants in the western United States and British Columbia, at one point ranking as the fourth-largest seafood restaurant chain in the country.[2]

After Rosen sold the company in 1989, the chain passed through a series of owners and steadily contracted. Its operating company, Skipper's, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2006 and was dissolved the following year, with the surviving restaurants sold to independent operators who continued under trademark licenses.[3] The brand's intellectual property was held by Starway Restaurants, LLC from 2007 until January 2022, when it was acquired by Harbor Wholesale, a food distributor based in Lacey, Washington.[4] The brand today comprises independently owned "Flagship" restaurants and "Fleet" grab-and-go outlets operating under license across the Pacific Northwest.[1]

History

Founding and expansion (1969–1989)

Skippers was founded by Herb Rosen (1921–2001), a Bellevue businessman and the son of Russian immigrants. A U.S. Army lieutenant in France during World War II, Rosen had co-founded the record distributor Consolidated Distributors, which he sold to ABC Records in 1965. Drawing on his fondness for fish and chips, he opened the first Skipper's Fish and Chips Chowder House in Bellevue in 1969; the company was later renamed Skipper's Seafood 'n' Chowder House.[2]

The chain expanded rapidly across the Pacific Northwest during the 1970s, with the company crediting its clam chowder and all-you-can-eat specials for the growth.[1] At its height, Skipper's operated in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and British Columbia,[3] and became the fourth-largest seafood restaurant chain in the United States, with more than 200 outlets.[2] Skipper's, Inc. was publicly traded until 1989.[3][5] By that year the chain had 214 restaurants and roughly $120 million in annual sales, but was losing money.[6]

NPC International ownership (1989–1996)

In 1988, National Pizza Company of Pittsburg, Kansas, the largest Pizza Hut franchisee, offered $24.5 million for the chain, which Skipper's management rejected as too low. Its chairman, O. Gene Bicknell, completed the acquisition in November 1989 for $31.2 million, after overcoming initial objections from Pizza Hut parent PepsiCo to a franchisee owning an outside business. National Pizza, renamed NPC International in 1994, planned to build the regional chain into a 700-unit national brand.[6] Instead, the company began closing underperforming locations, including ten in the Minneapolis region in January 1990.[7]

A roughly 40 percent rise in the price of pollock, the chain's primary fish, erased its expected return to profitability by 1991. In January 1992 the company launched an upscale spin-off concept, Skipper's Seafood Broiler, featuring higher-priced broiled entrees, modernized interiors, drive-through windows, and banquet rooms in restaurants nearly twice the usual size, while continuing to shutter unprofitable traditional units. Customers balked at the prices, and in 1993 the chain returned to lower-priced fried fish prepared with an English-style recipe. In its fiscal quarter ending March 1995, NPC took a $35 million charge to cover the closure of as many as 95 Skipper's restaurants, and in March 1996 it divested the chain, selling to the Seattle-based investment firm Meridian Capital in a deal reached in 1995.[6][3]

Return to Northwest ownership (1996–2006)

Under Meridian Capital, management broadened the menu with grilled entrees, including wild-caught salmon, halibut, and chicken, and added items such as cheeseburgers and milkshakes. The company also experimented with rebranding, converting several Seattle-area units to a "Seattle Fish and Chips" concept and opening a full-service restaurant called Seattle Crab Co.[8] In 2002, Seafood Restaurants Northwest, LLC, majority-owned by Seattle restaurateur Kenneth Williams, acquired the chain's parent company, Seattle Crab Co.; Skipper's then had 78 restaurants.[3][9] The chain continued to shrink, with sales falling from $30 million in 2004 to $23 million in the first eleven months of 2006.[9]

Bankruptcy (2006–2007)

In December 2006, Skipper's, Inc., by then headquartered in Edmonds, Washington, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Seattle. The company operated 59 restaurants in five Western states and employed 507 people, most part-time, and listed $6.7 million in debts; its largest creditor was the Internal Revenue Service, owed about $2 million in unpaid federal employment taxes. Williams stated in court documents that the taxes had gone unpaid for more than a year without management's knowledge after the company outsourced its accounting, and that he had borrowed $750,000 against personal assets to begin repaying the debt. The filing sought to shed leases on five unprofitable restaurants, in Seattle, Tacoma, and Ellensburg, Washington; Anchorage, Alaska; and Medford, Oregon; and on six locations that had already closed.[9][10]

The reorganization failed, and in June and July 2007 the company closed 23 more restaurants, including three in Spokane and one in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and sold the remainder individually before dissolving.[11][5] About 21 restaurants in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah continued operating under roughly a dozen new owners holding limited licenses to the Skipper's name and trademarks, which were sold during the proceedings. The largest buyer, Jae Hong, owner of the Herfy's Burger chain, purchased six of the eleven surviving Washington locations.[3]

Licensed brand (2007–present)

Starway Restaurants, LLC, a Bellevue company led by Scott Way, acquired the Skippers intellectual property in 2007 and licensed the brand to the independent operators.[12][4] In 2013, Starway began working with the Lacey-based food distributor Harbor Wholesale to open "Fleet" quick-service Skippers outlets inside convenience stores and neighborhood markets.[12][1]

On January 14, 2022, Harbor Wholesale, a fourth-generation family-owned distributor founded in 1923 and a subsidiary of Harbor Foods, acquired the Skippers brand and intellectual property from Starway. At the time of the sale, the brand comprised five licensed restaurants, an online retail business, and 128 Fleet quick-serve locations in convenience and grocery stores across the Northwest; Skippers joined Harbor's Real Fresh Brands portfolio.[4][12][13] As of 2024, the company reported more than fifty Flagship and Fleet locations across the Pacific Northwest.[1]

Operations

Skippers locations are independently owned and operated under nonexclusive, site-specific licenses rather than a conventional franchise system.[3][1] The brand distinguishes between two formats: Flagship locations, which are stand-alone quick-service restaurants, and Fleet locations, which are grab-and-go seafood counters inside convenience stores and markets.[1] The menu centers on fish and chips made with wild-caught Alaska pollock, clam chowder, and other fried seafood.[1][3]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "About". Skippers Seafood & Chowder. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 Poe, Sheryll (June 25, 2001). "Herb Rosen, who founded Skipper's, had Midas touch". The Seattle Times. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Shrestha, Bibeka (August 28, 2007). "Skipper's hoists new sails". The Seattle Times. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 Ulie, Chuck (March 24, 2022). "Harbor Wholesale Acquires Skippers Brand". CSP Daily News. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  5. 1 2 "Skippers shutters more than half of its units". Nation's Restaurant News. July 2007. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 "NPC International, Inc.". International Directory of Company Histories. Vol. 40. St. James Press. 2001. Retrieved July 29, 2026 – via FundingUniverse.
  7. ↑ "Skipper's Inc. 10 Minneapolis-Region Restaurants Are Closed", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 3, 1990
  8. ↑ "History". Skippers Puyallup. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  9. 1 2 3 "Edmonds-based Skipper's files bankruptcy; $2 million in taxes owed". The Seattle Times. December 14, 2006. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  10. ↑ "Skippers wants off the hook for unpaid taxes". The Daily Herald. Everett, Washington. December 15, 2006. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  11. ↑ "Skippers closes, sells diners". The Spokesman-Review. July 3, 2007. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  12. 1 2 3 "Harbor Wholesale Acquires Skippers Brand". Convenience Store News. January 21, 2022. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  13. ↑ Romeo, Peter (January 19, 2022). "Skippers has a new owner and growth plan". Restaurant Business. Retrieved July 29, 2026.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.