More than $15 million | 2025 Revenue: $31,000,000
When Nathan Stuart walked away from the only restaurant he’s ever closed, it opened the door to many more.
Stuart, the CEO of Intracoastal Fisheries Hospitality restaurant group, said the 2023 sale of Beach Road Fish House & Chicken Dinners provided him and his spouse, Margo Klar, with nearly $2 million to invest in other opportunities. He said that although he had hoped to revive the circa-1930s roadside restaurant, which he purchased in 2021 after it had served generations of Jacksonville residents and travelers, developers saw its Atlantic Boulevard location as a prime site for an apartment complex.
Stuart said he turned down advances a few times until he and Corner Lot Development Group agreed on the selling price of $1.9 million.
With that, he and Klar were able to fund the creation of seven other restaurants and have two more on the way.
Stuart has opened Fish House & Oyster Co. locations in Julington Creek, Tallahassee and New Berlin. The Tallahassee location was licensed to other operators, who closed it after more than five years, because the military transferred them out of the area.
Stuart also owns Grouper Shack locations in Jacksonville Beach and St. Augustine, The Boathouse in Ponte Vedra and St. Augustine and the Outback Crab Shack on Six Mile Creek in St. Johns County.
He acquired the former Safe Harbour Seafood in Crescent Beach, which he plans to open soon with a new name, and is in the permitting process for a $4 million conversion of the former Baron Catos in Vilano Beach near the Publix. It later became the Tropical Cuban restaurant.
Now in his seventh year as a restaurateur, the 42-year-old said he grew up at Atlantic Beach’s Seafood Kitchen. His father, Russell, has owned the restaurant since 1984.
“I’d be with him on the weekends and stuff,” Nathan Stuart said. “And even as a child, I’d hang out under the cook line where he was cooking in his restaurant until he could leave.”
After leaving college, Stuart worked with his father and soon was running Seafood Kitchen. Since then, he said, he’s s held every restaurant job there is.
While the elder Stuart paid his son well for a line cook, $18 an hour, it was not enough to start a family, Nathan Stuart said.
So Stuart and Klar used $25,000 in savings and four credit cards to develop the first restaurant of their own, Orange Park Fish House & Oyster Co. at 636 Kingsley Ave. Stuart, Klar and friends repaired and remodeled the building, which he said was dilapidated when the couple bought it.
They opened OP Fish House in 2018 for about $125,000 with their cash and maxed-out credit cards.
“We bought used tables and chairs, and spray-painted them. We did all the work ourselves. I recorded it all on Facebook as we were doing it,” Stuart said.
“I was unaware that we had created such a following. On the day we opened, there were 200 people in line, and we only had 125 seats.”
Stuart doesn’t work alone. He and Klar have a small team who overlook restaurant operations. Phoebe McFall is company president, specializing in all aspects of service and dining areas. Drew Thomas is culinary director. Stuart also has an account and payroll specialist.
“I oversee growth, construction, real estate, all that stuff. I sit in and help with major decisions for the restaurants,” he said.
Stuart involves restaurant general managers and leadership in roundtable meetings. He wants to hear from those working his restaurants.
“We take everybody’s input. We just don’t give orders. These people have been doing this most of their life, so we value their input.”
To help provide his restaurants with seafood, Stuart maintains relationships with local boat captains and heads a competitive fishing team, Team Gamechangers.
His goal is to reach $100 million in annual revenue. Projections have him reaching the halfway mark in FY 2026. It is not about profits, it is about achievement, Stuart said.
He recalled advice he received shortly after opening OP Fish House. Stuart asked an established businessperson advice about growing wealth.
“He goes, ‘What is your margin right now?’ I told him and he goes, ‘Well, you’re never going to make that in the stock market or investing with other people, so why don’t you just keep doing what you’re doing and do it over and over again.’ ”