At Bubba’s Shrimp Shack, Gump Is Catch Of The Day
Life is like a box of Cajun-spiced shrimp a few doors down from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where shrimp are just frolicking crustaceans. The world’s first theme restaurant based on a hit film has cash registers crooning 11 hours a day.
The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., 720 Cannery Row, is based on “Forrest Gump,” winner of six Oscars. The movie made $650 million worldwide - the third-highest-grossing film of all time - and people remember phrases from it, like the box-of-chocolates simile Forrest’s mom was so fond of.
There are plans for 23 other Bubba Gump locations. No specific sites have been announced.
The Monterey restaurant is filled with Gump movie memorabilia - script pages, storyboards, costumes, shoes, still photos and scrawled “Gumpisms” on every varnished wood tabletop. The place looks like a musical-comedy version of a rustic Gulf Coast shrimp shack.
The movie plays continuously on video monitors and diners can be seen mouthing favorite snatches of dialogue while they plow into such dishes as the top-selling Bucket o’ Boat Trash ($15.95), a mix of shrimp and lobster tails cooked “Baja style.”
In addition, customers are cajoled by waiters into answering Gump trivia questions. (How long did it take Forrest to run across America? Answer: Three years, 2 months, 14 days, 16 hours.) At each table, license plates that can be flipped on a rack to say either “Run, Forrest, Run” or “Stop, Forrest, Stop” tell servers when to stop by. The men’s room is called “Bubba’s,” the women’s “Jenny’s.”
Out front, in a small plaza where a gift shop sells $16.95 logo T-shirts as well as a $298 leather letter jacket, there is a Forrest Gump bench where tourists plop down for snapshots. They stick their feet into plaster versions of Gump’s red-and-white running shoes and put a hand on his straw-colored suitcase in which he carried his pingpong paddle, a copy of “Curious George,” a tube of Crest, a box of Russell Stover chocolates and other necessities.
The 200-seat restaurant has served more than 40,000 people since it opened March 29, though Tom Hanks and Sally Field have not been among them. The average wait for a table is 45 minutes.
“You couldn’t pick a better theme for a restaurant,” Schmiemeier said. “I’ve seen the movie at least six times.”
“People are crazy about the movie,” said Scott Barnett, president of the Orange County-based Rusty Pelican restaurant chain, which operates Bubba Gump, called Planet Gump by some. “That was like a home run going in,” said Barnett. “We avoided the plastic, chrome feeling you get with some other theme restaurants.”
Nothing could have been more fortunate for the Rusty Pelican chain, which includes 14 seafood restaurants in Southern California, Arizona and Midwestern cities. The company already operated a Rusty Seafood Grotto on the Monterey site and was about to remodel it to obliterate the memory of the old Steinbeck’s Lobster Grotto that preceded it when the Gump plan materialized. Rusty Pelican spent about $1 million developing the new restaurant.