Manufacturer: Caribe
User: Phillips Seafood / Phillips Crab House
Date of platter: 1969
Notes: Brice and Shirley Phillips started Phillips Seafood in 1956 by opening a crab shack in what was then the small town of Ocean City, Maryland. Prior to that, they'd worked in his father's seafood packing plant. Ultimately the business expanded to include more than a dozen restaurants in East Coast cities, airports and casinos. The main locations were the first, in Ocean City, and two in Baltimore.
A menu shows Phillips Crab House with an Ocean City location of 21st and Philadelphia Avenue, and that is the location of what is considered the flagship restaurant. It seems that most, if not all, of the restaurants were known as Phillips Crab House and the business itself was Phillips Seafood.
At the end of 2021 the family closed and sold the Ocean City location.
The white platter is decorated with a burgundy red airbrushed border and on the upper left, the words in Blackletter front, Phillips Crab House, and on the lower right, an airbrushed burgundy red crab.
Homer Laughlin made a later version of platters for the company in 2000. The white platter had a black rim with the same Blackletter "Phillips" placed around the rim, alternating with clipart images of fish, crabs, lemons, oysters, scallops, clams and shrimp with a net in black lines extending from the verge into the well.
Source:
Phillips Seafood
Contributor:
Susan Phillips