Crab Rolls Hit the Road

His new 10,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown Fort Myers will churn out thousands of boxes of the crab rolls that have long been a favorite menu item at his restaurant. The Shan-San rolls were sold at City of Palms Park during Red Sox spring training this year. Soon, Yates says, industry giant Sysco Corp. will be distributing them to restaurants and other venues around the country.

Yates, 35, opened Crü three years ago with a pair of loyal investors-John and Elizabeth Kagan-zero formal training as a chef or businessperson and only three years of back-of-the-house experience. He had previously worked at Bacchus & Co. in Fort Myers, formerly called "The Prosecutor" in honor of the high number of attorneys who made up the restaurant's clientele. There he created a fried crab roll that was "a meal in itself," he says.

At Crü, Yates wanted to create a similar product, but one that was less filling and had a shorter cooking time. Experimentation yielded the current roll with artificial crab (surimi), various spices he won't divulge, and cheese, all nestled in a spring roll and then fried and served with a sweet sauce and a spicy sauce.

The result was a hit at Crü, and customers soon started hounding Yates to do something on a bigger scale with the popular morsels.

"Finally we just kind of buckled down," Yates recalls. In autumn 2006, he and the Kagans, with operations director and classically trained chef David Funaro, formed Food Nerds LLC with "a few hundred thousand dollars," Yates says. Their first distribution conquest was Cheney Brothers, a company that supplies restaurants, hotels and clubs all over Florida.

Then, while on a work trip to Ohio, Yates took his chefs to Jacobs Field, the Cleveland Indians stadium, where he noticed the proliferation of snacks more sophisticated than the usual hot dogs and pizza.

An idea was sparked, and he approached the Red Sox organization about supplying his rolls for their spring training games at the City of Palms.

"He more or less aggressively pursued us," says Red Sox coordinator of Florida operations Todd Stephenson. "He knows how to get things done."

Getting things done meant that Yates and Funaro showed up for every one of the 17 spring training games this past season and personally dropped each roll into the tabletop fryers they'd set up onsite.

"That's how serious they are," says Stephenson. "They want to do it right because they do understand that this is stage one."

Fortuitously, the Sox had just signed Japanese pitching sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka (Dice-K), and the Asian media happened to be swarming City of Palms. Though the rice-free roll contains mostly artificial crab and isn't really Asian, it was a huge hit. The Food Nerds founders found themselves plastered all over the Japanese media. In the corn-yellow lounge of their warehouse, Yates and Funaro proudly show off a newspaper written completely in Kanji symbols, where Yates' photo and the backward word "Crü" stick out like gourmet hors d'oeuvres at a ballpark.

Within two months, Food Nerds had signed a deal with Sysco to distribute their Shan-San products-which Yates hopes to expand to include other types of rolls-nationwide, both in the restaurant and hotel market and in stadiums across the country, through the food service company Aramark.

"People work for years and can't get into Sysco," Funaro can't help boasting. "I am incredibly shocked at the growth of the company thus far."

Yates, however, doesn't seem as surprised by the company's success. "It's about building an identity," he says. "The Food Nerds image is really that branding label that I believe is going to stick in people's heads."

Based on his own ideas, he's had special boxes designed in which to deliver their rolls. They are stark black, as opposed to most companies' plain corrugated cardboard, with a fanciful drawing of an Asian chef and red lettering that Yates calls a "kung fu takeoff."

The business cards and ads, too, carry the wacky-fun-loving-guys image the two are trying to create. Funaro, in mad-scientist regalia, is billed as "Professor Food-Dweeb," and Yates, in a red cape, leaping over buildings as "Human Garbage Disposal."

"It's all about packaging and marketing," Yates says.