Fish Pike Fish Market

The Famous Pike Place Fish Market

The Pike Fish Market was originally founded in 1930 in Seattle, Washington. In 1965, John Yokoyama at the age of 25 purchased the Pike Fish Market, in which he was one of the employees and the business was not prospering. The recent owner did not like owning the business and after multiple attempts to sell the business didn’t fall though he sold it to John. John originally purchased it because he felt it would be better to work for himself than someone else and that would help him make his car payments. He worked 12 hours a day and 6 Days a week with no vacations, to try to make his business successful. It wasn’t as successful as he would hope for it to be and he wanted something different for the business, and decided to go into the wholesale fish business. This event almost lead him to declaring Bankruptcy in 1986, and he knew he had to make a choice to let the business go or fight to keep it alive. This is where John decided to consult with Jim Bergquist who was a coach consultant at BizFutures. Jim Berquist met with John and his team to help them become great, in which he advised him that the purpose of the business needed to be bigger. Jim challenged John to commit to a three month trial period but he was hesitant because of his financial state but decided to take him upon his offer.

Therefore, during one of their meetings John stated that he wanted something different within the business and an employee suggested of that they be “World Famous”, as a result he changed the name to the World Famous Pike fish Market. This is where it all started as John began to take a different approach to the structure of the business and begins to define what “World Famous” meant to him. It states “For us it means going beyond just providing outstanding service to people. It means really being present with the people and relation to them as human (www.pikeplacefish.com). It was there job to ensure that that they made the customer...