About Us
Bay City Restaurant & Seafood Company is a family owned and operated business founded in 1963 by William "Ted" Smith. The first seafood restaurant in Hanover, Pennsylvania, it was a business that grew out of a Volkswagen bug.
Then living in Maryland, Ted Smith started the restaurant by hauling the fresh seafood and produce over the Mason-Dixon line from Baltimore. He drove back and forth daily in a VW Beetle with the seats removed to accommodate 10 or 12 bushels of crabs. The first Bay City Restaurant was in a strip shopping center on Carlisle Street and concentrated more on carry out than dining. As time passed, Bay City moved to a plaza – the predecessor to today's North Hanover Mall. The plaza was updated into a mall about 1970, where the restaurant was located for 20 years. Mr. Smith's business belief was that if you gave people "good food for a good price they would come back". Come back they did, this is where the business really flourished and Ted was there 7 days a week to make sure it ran properly. He was a hands on owner – knowing the inventory down to the paper cup. All the recipes had been formulated by Smith and have not changed over the years.
Although the mall location had space for about 100 people, Ted Smith's dream was "to have a big restaurant". So in 1991, with his wife's support and two sons and a daughter working with him, 61 year old Smith built the current Bay City at 110 Eisenhower Drive. It accommodates more than 200 people in the restaurant, 100 people on the deck and up to 300 people in the banquet facility! It also houses a carry out seafood shop, which specializes in both prepared and raw seafood as well as a lounge with weekly entertainment. Although Ted passed away in March of 2002, his children are running the business with the same high quality business standards they learned from him throughout the years.
