Tito Tep
For 30 years, Tito Tep has spent most of his days sourcing, cutting and frying fish.
On Tuesdays, he purchases his fish and dry goods, seasons fillets and makes tartar sauce. Wednesdays are for scaling and cutting whole fish. Thursdays through Saturdays, he’s at his Broad Street Market stand at 5 a.m., ready for three full days of frying fish and serving hungry customers.
Tep has a system, finely tuned over the years.
But while the rhythms of running his seafood business have become routine, Tep’s life has been an interesting journey with big moves and career path twists, all leading to the life he’s made now.
From ages 6 to 9, Tep’s routine was formed by the daily requirements of a child living in a forced-labor concentration camp in his native Cambodia. Following the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge communist regime took control of the country, executing mass genocide and forcing many families, like Tep’s, into work.
His routine became—wake up at sunrise, work in the rice fields until sundown, eat the one meal of the day (always broth), sleep, repeat. When torrential rains came, Tep and his sister, three years his junior, would hunt for snails and frogs in the puddles and ponds to boil.
As the Vietnamese fought and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, Tep’s family escaped Cambodia, walking only at night for almost two weeks to the Red Cross refugee camp in Thailand. There, they met Dr. Daniel Batton who eventually sponsored the family to move to the United States and into his Hershey home, where they lived before finding their own place.
Tep’s parents went right to work in their new country, his mom getting a job as a maid at the Hershey Lodge and his father as a dishwasher at Hotel Hershey. On Saturdays, the family cleaned churches.
“When I say my parents worked, they worked,” he said. “Their focus was no handouts. That’s where I learned my work ethic.”
Tito Tep
While Tep eventually got a soccer scholarship and took college nursing courses, his professional path diverged when his uncle, who sold poultry at the old Kline Village Farmers Market in Allison Hill, urged him to consider starting his own business. There was a need for a fish vendor to round out the offerings at the market, which also housed Hummer’s Meats in its early days.
“I went in there and I saw the spot, and I said, ‘I know nothing about fish. I don’t know where to get it. I don’t know how to cut fish or nothing.’”
Still, his uncle was successful at the market, and he decided to give it a shot. However, tight-lipped industry peers wouldn’t help, and Tep had no clue where to source fresh fish. It wasn’t until a trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, when Tep’s wife Pam asked a seal trainer where they purchased their fish, that he unlocked a list to Maryland fish suppliers and markets.
He opened in 1997, but business lagged as he navigated a whole new world.
“I bought the wrong fish—all catfish, like whole catfish. Who does that?” Tep said. “But I’m thinking, ‘I’m from Cambodia, this is what we eat.’ No one bought it.”
Then, he started talking to customers.
One of those customers was city resident Lucy Hudson, who would accompany her mom on trips to Tep’s. Lucy recalled how her mother would give Tep “little tips” on seasonings to use.
“She would tell him how southern people like it,” Hudson said with a chuckle.
Tep took the suggestions seriously, switching up what he bought and beginning to fry fish two years into his business.
“It was never like, ‘I’m going to be a millionaire,’” he said. “It was just like, ‘I see it’s going to be a long haul. This could go really good.’ I saw Hummer’s, who had lines, so I saw there was a market for this.”
Thirty years later and the Hudsons are still regular customers at Tep’s, now at the Broad Street Market, where he’s been since 2001.
Hudson usually opts for the oyster trout, her husband gets the haddock, and her brother goes for whiting, although they rotate those occasionally. And when she says she’s a regular, she really is. Hudson typically ventures to the market twice a week, getting to Tep’s early in the morning to avoid the long lines come lunchtime.
Tep’s Fresh Seafood sign
On top of his food, Tep is known for his superb customer service, always greeting customers with a smile.
“If I go there tomorrow, he’ll go, ‘Hi Miss Lucy, what would you like?’” Hudson said.
To the Fullest
Steelton resident Tia Taylor is another customer who has been with Tep since she was a kid, coming to get fish with her mom and grandmother. As Taylor herself has become an adult, she’s also watched Tep’s own kids, who would sometimes help behind the counter, grow up.
His wife and kids have all pitched in over the years, especially holding down the business when Tep was diagnosed and sick with leukemia 13 years ago.
“My biggest asset is my family,” he said.
The Broad Street Market community has also become family to Tep, and the vendors have grown even closer bonds since the 2023 brick building fire.
Pre-fire, Tep said that vendors from the brick and stone buildings were separated, physically and relationally. After the fire, some displaced brick building vendors temporarily moved into the stone building before the tent was constructed. Lil’s Pretzels was one of them.
While Jesse Ebersole, owner of Lil’s, said that the transition was difficult, he did feel the vendors start to cross divides.
“I think a lot of good came out of it,” he said. “At the end of the day, we came together.”
Ebersole and Tep now sit on the Broad Street Market Alliance board, helping to bring the vendors’ voice to the governing body that oversees market operations and finances. They both joined after the fire, showing their care and concern for the market.
The pair sat next to each other at a recent meeting, throwing little jokes and quips at each other after the meeting ended. Before the fire, the two didn’t know each other, despite the fact that their tenures in the market overlapped by about a decade.
Now, they interacted like old pals.
Tep attributes some of the change to an earned mutual respect. Knowing how the Amish community values hard work, Tep felt he gained their respect when they saw him arriving to the market even earlier than they did and witnessed the hours he put in.
“We are so close now, because I think we have the same goal—to serve the community, make money and do the right thing,” Tep said.
After the big storm this past winter, Tep shoveled snow at the entrances to the market tent. His business isn’t in the tent, but he still wanted to help out.
Tep said that, soon after, Ebersole traveled an hour home from the market to retrieve his skid steer loader to help.
The vendors also hold meetings now to discuss concerns and comments, although Tep said that those have been less attended lately—a good sign, he said, as things stabilize and leadership improves.
Ebersole agreed.
Fried fish sandwich
“There’s a lot of positivity going on,” Ebersole said. “I feel more positive about the Broad Street Market than I ever have.”
And if you’re looking for a cheerleader, it’s Tep. He doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges the market has faced, as he’s been through many—a market with only three vendors at one point, a pandemic, corrupt leadership and the fire—but he’s also unapologetic in his love for the market community.
He’s recruited several current vendors and is helping mentor one of the newest, Damien’s Fried Chicken. Damien Randell reminds Tep of himself—a family man starting without business or commercial cooking experience, just a hope that he could find the success of other vendors.
He’s given him advice on the importance of consistency, dedication and customer service. It’s a concern that he wished other business owners would’ve had for him starting out, assistance that maybe would’ve stopped him short of having to seek help from an aquarium trainer.
Tep advises other vendors that the only competition they should worry about is themselves.
“It’s like, one stick, you can break it,” Tep said. “But if you have a whole bunch of us, that’s where our power is.”
Tep sees his future as entwined with the market. It’s where he wants to retire and where he thinks his legacy rests. He’s not concerned with expanding or opening additional stores, but just continuing to dutifully fill takeaway boxes for customers like Hudson and Taylor, serving each with a smile as he chips away at the inevitable long line that’ll form.
“It’s my life; it’s my community,” he said. “My legacy would be, I’ve served the community to the fullest.”
Tep’s Fresh Seafood is located inside the stone building of the Broad Street Market in Harrisburg.
If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!
