Bubba Gump Shrimp Co Owes Its International Seafood Chain Status To One ’90s Film

panparinda/Shutterstock

There are countless different chain restaurants out there, but only one takes its name and inspiration from an Oscar-winning movie. Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is a seafood chain restaurant themed around the 1994 movie “Forrest Gump,” with 21 locations in the United States and another 12 abroad in places like Osaka and Beijing. But for those who haven’t seen the movie, just who is Bubba Gump?

In the film, Forrest Gump is a humble Alabama man played by Tom Hanks, who the audience watches grow up via flashbacks as he unwittingly becomes involved in world events. Along the way (minor spoilers ahead), Forrest started a successful shrimping business he named after himself and a friend, Bubba, who was equally obsessed with shrimp — the original Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

This is a case where the movie came before the restaurant, but unlike the film’s Bubba Gump, the real business never caught any shrimp of its own. Businessman Anthony Zolezzi initially used the name to rebrand prepared shrimp in 1995, but the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant he founded one year later brought more success, and more opportunities to cash in on the wildly popular movie.

What are Bubba Gump Shrimp Co restaurants like?

Onfokus/Getty Images

The first Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant opened in Monterey, California, in 1996, still in the wake of “Forrest Gump” earning over $329 million and six Academy Awards from its original theatrical run. Shrimp is mentioned 41 times on the restaurant menu, making Bubba Gump restaurants what Forrest might call one of the best seafood restaurant chains in America.

Many dishes on the menu reference the film’s characters and events, like Forrest’s Seafood Feast (a fried seafood platter) and the Run Across America appetizer sampler. Tables can call servers with signs that say “Stop, Forrest, Stop,” request a private round of “Forrest Gump” trivia for the table, and walk past “Forrest Gump”-themed decorations to buy “Forrest Gump” merchandise at gift shops.

The movie might be this restaurant’s most obvious connection to Hollywood, but it’s not the only one. One of the things you may not know about Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurants is that the TV and movie actor Chris Pratt was cast in his first movie while working as a server in a Hawaiian location. Though Pratt has moved on from serving dozens of different shrimp dishes, the restaurant is still growing around the commercial staying power of this over-30-year-old movie.

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}