Steve Phillips put the future of his family-owned seafood business in the hands of an outsider who grew to be a trusted partner and his best friend.

But Mark W. Sneed, president of Phillips Foods and Seafood Restaurants, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50 Monday, leaving the company with a huge personal and professional void.

"Everybody was just totally shocked at this sudden tragedy," said company Chief Executive Officer Steve Phillips, who spent yesterday with Sneed's wife, Candace, and three small children. "We're just still in the process of trying to recover. Everyone and I loved him very much. He was a great leader and a great motivator of people."

Phillips' parents opened the seafood packing plant's first restaurant - a carryout crab shack - in Ocean City in 1956. It has been a family operation ever since, with few outsiders allowed entry into the privately held business.

But Sneed came to be regarded as a member of the Phillips clan, rising through its ranks and helping shape its vision of the future.

He helped put Phillips products - including its signature crab cakes - in households around the globe, in part by capitalizing on a plentiful supply of foreign crabmeat. He also spearheaded a string of strategic partnerships that propelled the company's national and international expansion.

It will be some time before Steve Phillips can turn his thoughts to a successor for Sneed, the chief executive said.

"You don't replace a Mark. There's only one. You just don't really replace family, you know. We all have to pull together to continue the strategy and the goals and objectives that he set," he said.

Many in the food industry mourned Sneed yesterday, using terms such as "incredible" and "inspirational" to describe him. They spoke of his linebacker build, of his commitment to providing Baltimore production jobs for city residents, of his zest for life and his willingness to share his expertise with others.

Sneed rose from his first Phillips post as a director of restaurant training in 1986 to president of both its manufacturing and restaurant divisions in 1998.

While president, manufacturing sales soared from $5 million to $160 million last year. The company's goods are now sold in more than 15,000 retail outlets and through hundreds of distributors in North America and Europe. And restaurant partnerships have put the Phillips name and brand in airports, rest stops and at the Redskins' FedEx Field in Landover.

"He was probably one of the key people that made this Phillips company the marketing success that it was. He was obviously very savvy and capable, and he was a tough competitor," said Bill Seiling, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association in Annapolis.

Some members of Seiling's trade group, particularly those who've built their businesses processing domestic crab meat, have had mixed feelings about Phillips' success through the years, however.

The company, which has eight restaurants between Baltimore and Myrtle Beach, S.C., is said to have revolutionized the crab industry by forsaking increasingly scarce - and pricey - homegrown crabs for readily available and less expensive Asian imports.

Soon, Phillips' plentiful crab supply had wooed business from local competitors, many of whom were already struggling amid shrinking Maryland harvests.

In 2000, Jack Brooks, president of crab-processing company J.M. Clayton Co. in Cambridge, and others sought tariffs on imported Asian crabs. The thinking was that the money could help pay for a Maryland crab marketing campaign to bolster the declining domestic industry.

They were unsuccessful. Many local processors have since gone out of business, according to a Sun series last year chronicling the shift from domestic to imported crabs.

Brooks praised Phillips yesterday, giving the company and Sneed credit for expanding the market by creating a demand for crabs in previously untapped places such as the Midwest.

"They have been the trailblazers in expanding the crab supply. ... I'd say Phillips is probably 99 percent responsible for getting more and more people looking for crab," Brooks said.

"A lot of people prefer crab from Asia, a lot of people prefer crab from Louisiana, a lot of people prefer crab from Maryland. They have a choice. The bottom line is that the market expansion has just been huge."

Today, Phillips has 12,000 employees worldwide and seafood processing plants in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Ecuador, Mexico and China. Brooks said Sneed was central in the expansion and a "mover and shaker" within the seafood world.

"He was pretty well the guy that was in charge of day-to-day operations ... and responsible really for bringing Phillips into the global environment," Brooks said. "He was an enormous promoter of all seafood, all crabs and seafood from Maryland and around the world. I'll tell you, we lost a good friend, a giant in the business, really."

Many who met Sneed professionally came to appreciate him personally.

Peter R. Gourlay, a columnist for Manufacturing Today magazine, met Sneed while both were serving at the World Trade Center Institute, a state and business partnership meant to connect Maryland to the rest of the world.

"He's one of those very rare people. He's a huge guy - he could be a linebacker for a pro football team - with just a gregarious nature, and he really had time for everybody," Gourlay said.

He tells a story Sneed loved to relate, of giving a former Baltimore drug dealer a chance by hiring him as a dishwasher. The man went on to become one of the top producers on a company production line.

"Mark is someone who's willing to believe in people," Gourlay said. "He was a great ambassador for the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland. His passing is about more than just a president who had great business growth for his company."

tricia.bishop@baltsun.com