Splash Café, the Central Coast’s premier seafood restaurant, world-famous for its award-winning clam chowder, catering and artisan bakery, is starting its 27th year in business by ramping up its grocery retail and restaurant product placement for 2018. Awarded the Small Business of the Year for the Central Coast in 2016 for California District 17, Splash Café produces 40,000 gallons of chowder per year at its San Luis Obispo and Pismo Beach locations, as well as a wide selection of seafood, burgers, sandwiches, chili and bakery items.
The company has supplied frozen Clam Chowder to Costco in Northern and Southern California and the Central Valley for 12 years and to restaurants in Southern California for the past eight years. Splash Café also sells its frozen chowder online and ships to locations all across the continental United States from its Monterey Street location. The frozen chowder sales have grown exponentially since 1998. In 2010, Splash began offering gourmet catering and now provides a full breakfast, lunch and dinner menus for business meetings, weddings, anniversaries, parties and any other special occasion.
The company’s newest product is Raucous Daucus (aka the rowdy carrot), a caliente Bulgarian Carrot Pepper sauce. In 2018, it will be making in-roads into more Central Coast and Southern California grocery stores and retail specialty shops. The sauce made its debut in 2016 and sold out its initial 500 cases. This coming year, Splash has planted enough peppers for 1000 cases and expects to sell out. With a decidedly unique flavor, the peppers are planted locally by Talley Farms in Arroyo Grande, California. The sauce can be purchased online, at El Rancho/California Fresh locations, at the Talley Vineyard tasting room or at the Splash Café locations in San Luis Obispo (Monterey Street) and in Pismo Beach. The company is currently developing variations with increased heat levels and a sweet heat version that will roll out in 2019.
Splash Café is looking to extend its Clam Chowder product placement into military bases and additional stores in 2018. Because of the growing product placement, local catering business and online sales, Splash Café has decided not to renew its lease in the downtown location (next to Barnes and Noble) effective December 31, 2017.
“Splash Café is allocating more labor and resources to our growing frozen clam chowder, hot pepper sauce and new products under development,” says Joanne Currie, Splash Cafe owner. “It was a very difficult decision to make but since we have our cafe on Monterey Street in San Luis Obispo, we decided not to renew the lease in the downtown location to concentrate on the new business direction. In the five years since we opened the downtown location the number of restaurants and dining opportunities has increased dramatically. This has created challenges in meeting our business goals in that location.
We truly enjoyed the time in the downtown location and thank our downtown customers for their business over the past five years. Our customers won’t have to travel far to get their Splash food though, just uptown on Monterey St in SLO and of course the original Splash Café in Pismo Beach.”