Phillips Restaurant celebrated it?s 50th anniversary Friday with long-term employees, friends and family at their Harborplace location.
One of the most interesting things about thePhillips story is that everyone agrees that working at Phillips, no matter how long, is like working in one big family.
“The longer you work here, the more you want to stay,” Christine Taylor, a head server who has been working at Phillips for 16 years, said. “It?s all in the people that you work with, and how they make you feel, and the people that I work for, as well as the people underneath me just make it feel more like fun than work.”
David Bryant has been working as the Director of Design and Guest Perception at both Phillips Restaurant and Phillips Foods. He started out as a busboy in 1964 and has been there for 42 years. “Watching Brice and Shirley and their work ethic always helped me going along, and as I was selected to do different positions throughout my career, I was given the opportunity to do what I thought was right for the company, which they had taught me, so I did it!”
Summer Blackowizz, working at Phillips for three months, says it?s the best job she?s ever had. “I love it. It?s a lot of work, especially with summer coming up, but it?s definitely a big family. Everyone takes care of each other and we all help each other out.”
Several people spoke, including Mayor Martin O?Malley and his wife, Judge Catherine O?Malley, who actually worked at Phillips Harborplace for a number of years when it first opened. The couple read a document proclaiming June 16 as “the Phillips Seafood Restaurant Day in Baltimore.”
Charms City Cakes was on hand with their giant crab-shaped cake. Author Dale Cathell was promoting and signing copies of his book, “Empires of the Crab: The Phillips Odyssey,” a novel about the Phillips company.
Perhaps the most inspiring part of the story is the fact that Phillips began as a small, four-seat crab stand in Ocean City in 1956.
Brice and Shirley Phillips managed to turn a $2,000 investment into one of the largest-grossing family restaurants in the country.
In the ?90s, Phillips expanded to a seafood manufacturing business, Phillips Foods, that today is the world?s largest manufacturer of blue crab meat.
Phillips Restaurant has locations in Ocean City, Baltimore, Washington, Annapolis, Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Atlantic City, N.J.
