Tap Handle #739: Smashin Crab

December 20, 2019

Tap Handle #739: Smashin Crab

Tap size: 10.75"
Rarity: readily available
Mounting: 3/8" ferrule on 5/16" anchor bolt

This tap comes to the Museum thanks to the efforts of a collectors club member, as well as Autum, one of the owners of Smashin Crab. It's a fantastic and beautiful tap featuring the restaurant's logo at the top: a crab with a mallet inside of a life preserver. The tap itself looks like a weathered pier, with rope near the top and seaweed at the bottom. A brass colored frame on the base surrounds the name of the restaurant, which appears as a decal in white lettering. Regarding the design and use of the tap, Autum provided me with the following:

"The most interesting thing about the Smashin Crab Tap Handle is that it was NOT designed for beer or a brewery at all! They were made to be used to dispense our Signature Cocktails. There were initially 8 taps produced for the first 2 restaurants. The pieces were designed and executed by Steel City Tap Co. out of Birmingham, AL. Producing such a detailed design for the very small order was met with much opposition, but Smashin Crab was very persistent in getting the work done. Around a year later, 100 more taps were commissioned to accommodate for growth in the San Antonio market and for future franchising.

The piece has taken on a life of it's own, with interest of collectors across the country without having stepped foot in any Smashin Crab location. The copper plates were created by our handy man to put the final touch of class on our bar display."

If you would like to purchase your own Smashin Crab tap handle, send Smashin Crab a message via their website contact form, or through their Facebook site. The cost is $115.

Click through to read more about Smashin Crab and to see more photos of this smashingly good tap...

Smashin Crab was founded in San Antonio, Texas in 2016 by Pablo Felix, Paul Griffith, Jamal Pratt, Dan Sevilla, and Robert Blalock, as well as an investor group of family and friends. Felix had an active career in the food service industry in Tampa, Florida, but wanted to pursue his dream of owning his own restaurant. After visiting a restaurant concept in Chicago where the menu feature was a seafood boil, Felix was intrigued. Recognizing the need for additional restaurant resources, Felix contacted Blalock, an active restaurateur, and inquired about his interest. After Blalock agreed to come on board, Felix set up a meeting with the leadership of a seafood boil restaurant franchise group in Phoenix, Arizona. Blalock enlisted Griffith, a college friend, entrepreneur and career accountant/auditor, to assess the viability of the franchise. Griffith advised the two men that the franchise opportunity was not only a viable business venture, but also appeared to contain some intangible cultural “magic”.

Griffith was offered to participate as an investor in purchasing a franchise. After discussing the opportunity with his business partner, Pratt, Griffith agreed, but under one condition: that he would be able to develop the seafood boil restaurant concept from scratch, to which Blalock and Felix agreed. In order to diversify the financial risk, Blalock and Griffith decided to raise capital to fund the venture. They developed a list of trusted friends and family and contacted them with the idea of becoming an owner/investor in a seafood “Cajun” restaurant. Everyone who was contacted decided to participate in the venture. With the ownership group now set, the organizational structure and bylaws were developed and approved, and the group named Griffith as CEO. Additionally, the group voted to name the parent company Potbelly Stove LLC and submitted entries to vote on the trade name of the restaurant. Of the entries submitted, the group voted for the trade name Smashin Crab, which Pratt had come up with.

Felix then introduced Sevilla to his fellow owners. Sevilla represented a restaurant managerial group with 75 years of collective restaurant operational experience. This managerial group, who had demonstrated success in the industry, was in transition from a previous opportunity and looking for a new one. Griffith offered an equity position in Smashin Crab to Sevilla’s group for their intellectual capital in the restaurant industry. The group accepted the offer and the ownership structure was complete. In early 2017, Sevilla’s group moved from Phoenix to San Antonio to found the first incarnation of Smashin Crab. By early spring, construction was completed and the restaurant opened for business. A second location opened in 2018 in the Stone Oak area of San Antonio.